Terminology - WOTTIES 2025 - Collins Dictionary shortlisted Words of the Year

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Terms shortlisted for the Collins Word of the Year (WOTY) are no less interesting mirrors of a year’s worth of trends and events. Collins posted the following nine 2025 Words of the Year, competing with “vibe coding”, the one term that was selected as the 2025 Word of the Year. A list of nine terms, each including a copyrighted Harper Collins definition, as well as a supporting still image, and/or GIF animation.

• aura farming: The deliberate cultivation of a distinctive and charismatic persona. 

© Harper Collins Publishers 

• biohacking: The activity of altering the natural processes of one's body in an attempt to improve one's health and longevity.   
  

© Harper Collins Publishers 

• broligarchy: A small clique of very wealthy men who exert political influence.   

© Harper Collins Publishers 

• clanker: A derogatory term for a computer, robot, or source of artificial intelligence. 

GIF animation file unavailable for "clanker". 

Visit https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty

• coolcation: A holiday in a place of cool climate. 

© Harper Collins Publishers 

• glaze: To praise or flatter (someone) excessively or undeservedly.

© Harper Collins Publishers 

• HENRY (acronym for High Earner, Not Rich Yet): A person who has not accrued substantial wealth from their high income due to their lifestyle or external financial demands.

© Harper Collins Publishers 

• micro-retirement: A break taken between periods of employment in order to pursue personal interests.

 GIF animation file unavailable for "micro-retirement". 

Visit https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty

• task-masking: The act of giving a false impression that one is being productive in the workplace.

© Harper Collins Publishers 

References
Quinn, R. (Nov. 6, 2025).  Collins’ Word of the Year 2025: AI meets authenticity as society shifts. Collins Love of Language Blog.
https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/collins-word-of-the-year-2025-ai-meets-authenticity-as-society-shifts/#google_vignette 
Collins Word of the Year (WOTY)
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty

Terminology – WOTTIES 2025 – Collins Dictionary “vibe coding” Word of the Year

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Each year, the major English language dictionaries publish The Words of the Year (WOTY, plural WOTTIES). A list of terms, and the winner of them all, are selected by a committee of terminologists, often backed by the number of times the term(s) were searched online, and/or crowdsourced votes. 

Collins Dictionary selected “vibe coding” as the 2025 Word of the Year winner. A term first used on the social media platform X, on February 2, 2025, by Andrej Karpathy, former Director of AI at Tesla and founding engineer at OpenAI. In the X post, Karpathy described how easy it was to use AI-assisted programming tools, such as Cursor Composer and Claude Sonnet, designed to code and debug upon natural language prompting. He described how the tools were currently so good at executing his prompts that he could “give in to the vibes” (go with the flow) of coding, while “just forgetting that the code even exists”. In other words, he could use AI tools to do the computer programming, without writing and reading the unfolding code, or even attempting to debug it. A new jouissance, indeed!

By implication, according to Cress (2025) at the BBC, even if Karpathy's post on vibe coding addressed insiders, his X post also suggested that anyone could at least program a simple app, without any prior coding knowledge. All the user would have to do is request the program's features and functions. The example Karpathy provided for a weekend website construction project was that he could just ask the AI tool to "decrease the padding on the sidebar by half ", without even having to find the code that would execute such a change to the website's functional appearance. 

In turn, Collins defined the term “vibe coding” as "the use of artificial intelligence prompted by natural language to assist with the writing of computer code.” To illustrate the Dictionary's winning 2025 Word of the Year, Collins also posted the below animated GIF. 

© Harper Collins Publishers

References

Collins Dictionary (online)

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty

Cress, L. (Nov. 5, 2025) 'Vibe coding' named word of the year by Collins Dictionary.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd2y053nleo 

Quinn, R. (Nov. 6, 2025).  Collins’ Word of the Year 2025: AI meets authenticity as society shifts. Collins Love of Language Blog.
https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/collins-word-of-the-year-2025-ai-meets-authenticity-as-society-shifts/#google_vignette 

Karpathy, A. (2025) Post on “X”.
https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383?lang=en

Terminology – WOTTIES 2024 (2) Collins Dictionary WOTY shortlist

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann 

Shortlisted terms for the Word of the Year are always at least as interesting as the winner of them all. The following Collins Dictionary GIF and JPEG files each present one of the nine shortlisted terms for the 2024 Word of the Year. The terms are shown together with their Collins Dictionary definition. 

 

References
Collins Dictionary - WOTY 2024, Shortlisted words.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty

Collins Dictionary - The Language Lover's Blog.

https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/a-year-when-hedonism-and-anxiety-combine/

Terminology: WOTTIES 2023 (2) - Contenders for the Collins Dictionary Word of the Year.

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Word of the year (WOTY) contenders are just as interesting as the 'winner of them all'. Below, the list of the nine terms that competed for the 2023 Collins Dictionary WOTY, together with their definitions and illustrations (GIF or JPEG). 

1. de-influencing: (noun) 

2. nepo baby: (noun) 

3. canon event: (noun)

4. ultra-processed: (adjective) 

5. semaglutide: (noun) (also the active ingredient in the trademarked medication called Ozempic®).

6. ULEZ (ULEZs plural): (noun) 

7. greedflation: (noun) the use of inflation as an excuse to raise prices to artificially high levels in order to increase corporate profits.

8. debanking: (verb) to deprive (someone) of banking facilities.

9. bazball: (noun) 

References

Shariatmadari, D. (Nov. 1, 2023). The acceleration of AI and other 2023 trends. Collins Language Lovers Blog.

https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/the-acceleration-of-ai-and-other-2023-trends/ 

(Staff) The Collins Dictionary word of the year is ….

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty

Terminology: WOTTIES 2023 (1) - 'AI' Collins Dictionary Word of the Year.

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The 2023 Collins Dictionary Word of the Year (WOTY) is AI, as in Artificial Intelligence. Collins defines AI as “abbreviation for artificial intelligence: the modeling of human mental functions by computer programs”. 

The choice of the term AI might appear surprising, considering that AI has been around for almost 70 years as an academic discipline. What has changed in 2023, is that AI-driven Chatbots, such as ChatGPT and Claude would probably break the Turing Test for natural language processing and the production of human-like texts, and by the same token deal a serious blow to the domain of epistemology. Indeed, in a topsy-turvy outcome, computer scientists are now designing new tests to defeat machines vs. trying to program them so that they behave like humans—or at least fool humans into believing they are also human.

The Turing Test was designed by Alan Turing in 1950. The test consisted in challenging computer scientists to design a machine that would exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. When carried out, the Turing Test would invoke interaction between a human testing two interlocutors, one of which would be a machine. If the human, who was testing the two interlocutors, could not tell the difference between the machine interlocutor and the human interlocutor, then the machine would have passed the test, as it would be exhibiting behavior indistinguishable from that of a human. 

 In 2023, considering how Natural Language Processing  (NLP), Large Language Models (LLMs) and deep Machine Learning (ML) can combine to respond to human queries for specific information, using Chatbots for example,  computer scientists are now looking for ways to devise new challenging, and even simple tests that underscore what the machine still cannot do like humans. Thus, for example, computer scientists are designing simple visual logic puzzles, which stump AI-driven programs, when compared to human performance on the same tests (Biever, 2023). 

However, at the end of the day, user beware! Before falling-head-over-heels for AI-driven ChatGPT, assumed to already exhibit conversational performance largely equivalent to or indistinguishable from that of humans, remember that passing the Turing Test means being fooled by a machine. The above Collins animated GIF offers a few cases in point. 

References

Biever, C. (July 25, 2023). ChatGPT broke the Turing test — the race is on for new ways to assess AI. Nature. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02361-7 

Chi, C. (Nov. 29, 2023). AI chatbots: Our top 18 picks for 2023.

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-ai-chatbot 

Guy, J. (Nov. 1, 2023). Collins Dictionary picks ‘AI’ as its word of the year.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/01/world/11-01-2023-collins-dictionary-ai-word-of-the-year-scli-intl-scn/index.html 

Shariatmadari, D. (Nov. 1, 2023). The acceleration of AI and other 2023 trends. Collins Language Lovers Blog.

https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/the-acceleration-of-ai-and-other-2023-trends/ 

(Staff) The Collins Dictionary word of the year is ….

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty

Terminology - WOTTIES 2022 - The Collins shortlist (2)

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The Word of the Year (WOTY) shortlist is no less interesting than the winner of them all. Especially this year, since the terms shortlisted are all related to permacrisis, the Collins WOTY selected for 2022.

Below, the shortlist of the 9 words that competed with permacrisis, together with the Collins animated gif files and jpeg stills, illustrating each of them. The list includes 5 additional neologisms, added to the Collins Dictionary in 2022: partygate, lawfare, warm bank, quiet quitting and splooting.

• partygate: [noun, informal] 

• carolean: [adjective; origin from the Latin Carolus meaning Charles] 

• Kiev: [noun] 

• lawfare: [noun] 

• quiet quitting: [noun, informal] 

• splooting: [noun, slang] 

• sportwashing: [noun, informal] 

• vibe shift: [noun, slang] 

warm bank: [noun] 

References

The Collins Word of the Year is…

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty

Shariatmadari, D. (Nov. 1, 2022). A year of permacrisis - Collins – Language Lovers Blog.

https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/a-year-of-permacrisis/

Terminology - Collins Dictionary WOTY 2021 runners up

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The Collins Dictionary list of terms competing for Word of the Year is no less interesting than the winning term.  Collins also offers fabulous gif and jpeg bonuses, illustrating both the champion term and, and all of the contenders. Below, a list of them all. 

climate anxiety

double vaxxed

metaverse

pingdemic

cheugy

neopronoun

crypto

hybrid working

regencycore

References

Collins Dictionary

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/

The Collins Word of the Year is...

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty 

Terminology - WOTTIES 2021 - NFT (non-fungible token) Collins' Word of the Year 2021

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Huh? According to Collins Dictionary, the rise of the term NFT, meaning “non-fungible token” was meteoric. Specifically, the term NFT was up 11,000% in the monitored 4.5 billion-word Collins corpus (Flood, 2021). So, what is an NFT?  The Collins Dictionary defines NFT as:

1. Abreviation for non-fungible token: a unique digital certificate, registered in a blockchain, that is used to record ownership of an asset such as an artwork or a collectible.

2. Noun: an asset whose ownership is recorded by means of a non-fungible token (e.g., the artist sold the work as an NFT).

Thus, an NFT is a form of cryptocurrency, a unique registered unit of data, serving both to authenticate ownership of a particular asset or collectible and, as a corollary, to identify an associated unique piece of art or collectible, whether original or copy. The NFT asset might be a video, a photo, a song, a domain name, a game character, a virtual accessory or, actually, anything else. 

Because the certificate is “non-fungible”, meaning that the unit of data cannot be replaced or interchanged with an identical part or parts, the associated collectible or artwork also becomes unique.  According to Collins, the interesting aspect of the term NFT is its use in the art world, bringing together art, technology, and commerce, to resolve issues of authenticity and reproduction, while breaking out of the dominant crowd of new COVID-related terminology (Shariatmadari, 2021).

Presentation of the Collins Word of the Year (WOTY) is also special, because of the animated Collins GIFs that are always created to illustrate the WOTY, (and its competitors). Below, the Collins GIF for NFT, the Collins Dictionary WOTY 2021. The GIF shows an auction scene for the sale of NFT art. Notice that the bidders are also holding up bitcoin, ethereum, and zcoin cryptocurrency symbols, in the bidding process for NFT art.

Reference

Collins Dictionary https://www.collinsdictionary.com/
Staff (Nov. 24, 2021). The Collins Word of the Year is…. Collins Dictionary.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty
Flood, A. (Nov. 24, 2021) NFT beats cheugy to be Collins Word of the Year. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/24/nft-is-collins-dictionary-word-of-the-year
Shariatmadari, D. (Nov. 24, 2021). Get your crypto at the ready: NFTs are big in 2021. Collins Dictionary Language Lovers Blog.
https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/get-your-crypto-at-the-ready-nfts-are-big-in-2021/

Terminology -WOTTIES (2) - Collins Dictionary 2020 shortlisted Words Of The Year

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The Collins Dictionary shortlisted Words Of The Year (i.e., the runner-up WOTTIES) are no less interesting than the Word Of The Year, winner of them all. This year’s shortlist is predictably reflective of the COVID-19 pandemic, with selected terms such as coronavirus, keyworker, furlough, and self-isolate. 

However, the Collins shortlisted 2020 WOTTIES also capture other key events that punctuated the year 2020. Events, such as those sparked by one too many horrifying police injustices, resulting in spontaneous social upheaval in support of Black Lives Matter (BLM). The shortlist also includes the unprecedented popularity of TikTocking doctors, reaching out to hundreds of thousands of teenagers with one-minute sex-education tips, also seen, dancing off the stress of 24-hour shifts at overcrowded, understaffed, and under-equipped, Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Even the neologism MeGxit, mapped on Brexit, referring to an unusual defection from the inner circles of the British Crown, was shortlisted.

Below, the Collins definitions for the 2020 WOTTIES shortlisted, together with the fabulously animated GIFs for BLM (Black Lives Matter), and for coronavirus (above), both directly imported from the Collins website.

• BLM abbreviation for Black Lives Matter: a movement that campaigns against racially motivated violence and oppression.  
  
• coronavirus: (noun) any group of viruses that cause infectious illnesses of the respiratory tract, including COVID-19.
• keyworker: (noun) an employee in a profession considered essential to the functioning society.
• furlough: (noun) a temporary laying-off of employees, usually because there is insufficient work to occupy them.
• social distancing: (noun) maintaining a certain distance between onself and other people in order to prevent infection with a disease.
• Tiktoker: (noun) a person who regularly shares or appears in videos on TikTok®.
• self-isolate: (verb) to quarantine oneself if one has or suspects one has a contagious disease.
• mukbang: (noun) a video or webcast in which the host eats a large quantity of food for the entertainment of viewers.
• MEGxit: (noun) the withdrawal of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex from royal duties.

Reference

Collins 2020 Word of the Year:  Shortlisted words - https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty

Terminology – WOTTIES (2) Collins Dictionary WOTY 2019 shortlist

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

No less interesting than the WOTY* is the shortlist of WOTY candidates. In other words, the 2019 Collins list of potential WOTTIES from which the WOTY is finally selected, “winner of them all”. 

The following terms were shortlisted for the Collins Dictionary WOTY 2019 [Collins Word Lover’s blog(1)]:

• bopo (ˈbəʊpəʊ) noun also spelt BoPo: a movement advocating the view that people should be proud of the appearance of their bodies, or any aspect of this, especially size

• cancel (ˈkænsəl) verb: to publicly cease to acknowledge a person, organization, etc, esp on social media, in order to express disapproval of their activities or opinions

• deepfake (ˈdiːpˌfeɪk) noun, verb: (noun) a technique by which a digital image or video can be superimposed onto another, which maintains the appearance of an unedited image or video; (verb) to superimpose one digital image or video onto another so that it maintains the appearance of an unedited image or video

• double down (ˈdʌbəl daʊn) phrasal verb: to reinforce one’s commitment to a venture or idea in spite of opposition or risk

• entryist (ˈɛntrɪɪst) noun, adjective: (noun) a person who joins an existing political party with the intention of changing its principles and policies; (adjective) relating to the practice of joining an existing political party with the intention of changing its principles and policies

• hopepunk (ˈhəʊpˌpʌŋk) noun: a literary and artistic movement that celebrates the pursuit of positive aims in the face of adversity

• influencer (ˈɪnflʊənsə) noun: a person who uses social media to promote lifestyle choices, commercial products, etc to his or her followers

• nonbinary (ˌnɒnˈbaɪnərɪ) adjective. Also spelt non-binary: relating to a gender or sexual identity that does not conform to the binary categories of male or female, heterosexual or homosexual

• rewilding (riːˈwaɪldɪŋ) noun: the practice of returning areas of land to a wild state, including the reintroduction of animal species that are no longer naturally found there

Got a favorite?

* WOTY is an acronym that stands for Word of the Year. It rhymes with “potty”.

©Collins Dictionaries

                                 

  

References

Collins Word of the Year – The Collins word of the Year is ….

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty

Collins Word Lover’s blog

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/word-lovers-blog/

Collins Word Lover’s blog (1) - Nov. 7, 2019 – Collins Dictionaires  - Collins Word of the Year 2019 shortlist

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/word-lovers-blog/new/collins-word-of-the-year-2019-shortlist,580,HCB.html

Collins Word Lover’s blog (2) - Nov. 7, 2019 - Ian Brookes -  From ‘Brexiety’ to ‘prorogation’: How Brexit has changed the way we use language in 2019

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/word-lovers-blog/new/from-brexiety-to-prorogation-how-brexit-has-changed-the-way-we-use-language-in-2019,577,HCB.html

Collins Word Lover’s blog (3) - Nov. 7, 2019 – Collins Dictionaires - The rich tapestry of language provides a varied Word of the Year 2019 list

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/word-lovers-blog/new/the-rich-tapestry-of-language-provides-a-varied-word-of-the-year-2019-list,578,HCB.html

Terminology – WOTTIES 2018 (2) Collins Dictionary

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The Collins Dictionary Word of the Year 2018 is the term single-use.

According to the Collins dictionary, single-use is “a term that describes items whose unchecked proliferation are blamed for damaging the environment and affecting the food chain”. The term ‘single-use refers to “ products – often plastic – that are ‘made to be used once only’ before disposal." The 2018 Collins WOTY covers the meaning of single-use evoking ocean plastic pollution and its deadly effects on marine wildlife, as well as the accumulation of single-use plastic in landfills as non-biodegradable waste. Thus, single-use products have been especially targeted in global campaigns to reduce their use.

According to Collins, the frequency of the term single-use has increased threefold since 2013, in an effort to raise public awareness about the negative planetary effects of single-use products. 

Incidentally, about a dozen categories of single-use products, such as straws, paper plates, cotton swabs, stirrers and swizzle sticks, were banned by the European Parliament on Oct. 24, 2018 (Le Monde). The European Parliament voted overwhelmingly for the ban with 571 votes in favor, 53 against, and 34 abstentions. The European Federation of Plastics found the measures disproportionate. They blame ocean plastics pollution on the mismanagement of waste. Contrary to linguistic evidence, they also blame plastics pollution on a lack of public awareness.

Collins lexicographers monitor 4.5 billion words per year. They select a shortlist of potential WOTTIES which are no less interesting than the winner of them all. The following is the Collins shortlist of 2018 Wotties.  

• backstop - a system that will come into effect if no other arrangement is made.

• floss – a dance in which people swing their hips in one direction while swinging their arms in the opposite direction with their fists clenched. People flossing look as though they are pulling a piece of dental floss back and forth between their legs.

• gaslight (verb) - to attempt to manipulate (a person) by continually presenting them with false information until they doubt their sanity.

• gammon – etymologically related to the 15th-century French term “jambon” referring to ham. Term used by Charles Dickens in 1838 in his novel Nicholas Nickleby in reference to “a large, self-satisfied, middle-aged man who professes an extreme patriotism in large part to disguise his essential selfishness and corruption.” Term used in 2018 on Twitter as an antidote to “snowflake”, meaning “red-faced angry person”.

• #Metoo - cultural movement that seeks to expose and eradicate predatory sexual behavior, especially in the workplace.

• plogging – activity of picking up litter while jogging in an effort to address global pollution in beauty spots. The term is a blend of the Swedish term plocka meaning to pick and the term jogging.

• vegan - person who refrains from using any animal products whatsoever for food, clothing, or any other purpose.

• whitewash (verb) - to cast a white actor in the role of (a character from a minority ethnic group) or to produce (a film or play) using white actors to play characters from a minority ethnic group.

• VAR – abbreviation for video assistant referee. The term was written in the Laws of the Game by the International Football Association Board (IFAB) and used for the first time during the 2018 FIFA World cup.

References

Collins Dictionary WOTY 2018 

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty

Collins 2018  WOTY shortlist

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/word-lovers-blog/new/collins-2018-word-of-the-year-shortlist,451,HCB.html

Etymology corner – Collins WOTY  2018 - Why single-use?
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/word-lovers-blog/new/etymology-corner-collins-word-of-the-year-2018,449,HCB.html

Le parlement européen votre pour l’interdiction des produits en plastique à usage unique (Oct. 24, 20180 Le Monde

https://www.lemonde.fr/pollution/article/2018/10/24/les-eurodeputes-pour-l-interdiction-des-produits-en-plastique-a-usage-unique_5374014_1652666.html