It took about 70 years for the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary to be completed. Conceived in 1857, the project trudged on, word by word, with entries gushing in via the British Royal Mail from across the world.
There were over 3,000 notable contributors, who diligently mailed slips with words, their meanings, etymologies, references, etc. And some of the prolific contributors included a pornographer, a junkie, murderers, lunatics and even a cannibal.
Fascinating details are presented as abecedary chapters in the wonderfully breezy book ‘The Dictionary People’ by Sarah Ogilvie, a professor of language and lexicography at the University of Oxford.
Sarah’s eight-year research for the book began through serendipity, when nostalgia nudged her on a stroll to the “silent, cold, musty-smelling” basement archive of the Oxford University Press. “It is a place full of friendly, word-nerd, ghosts,” she writes.
There, in a corner, she “opened a dusty box and came across a small black book tied with cream ribbon”. And that book, which she calls a “treasure trove”, had all the details of ‘the dictionary people’.
These details were meticulously jotted down and preserved by James Murray, the longest serving editor of the Oxford Dictionary (1879 up to his death in 1915), who pored over thousands of word-entry ‘slips’ that were mailed to him.
“The OED was the Wikipedia of the nineteenth century — a huge crowdsourcing project in which, over seventy years between 1858 and 1928, members of the public were invited to read the books that they had to hand, and to mail to the Editor of the Dictionary examples of how particular words were used in those books,” Sarah notes.
James and his team dissected each entry with scalpelesque scrutiny in an iron shed that he called the ‘Scriptorium’. Contributors were given clear instructions on what the slips should contain: ‘Give the date of your book (if you can), author, title (short). Give an exact reference, such as seems to you to be the best to enable anyone to verify your quotations. Make a quotation for every word that strikes you as rare, obsolete, old-fashioned, new, peculiar, or used in a peculiar way.’
One can imagine how taxing a task the vetting and compilation process would have been. Now, fast-forward to the present. As Sarah notes, “Today, crowdsourcing happens at extraordinary speed, scale, and scope thanks to the internet.”
That’s what we are at. Today, new words are being created at a rat-a-tat pace as you thumb through this page, or scroll the mobile screen. The Internet is turning out to be a ‘Scriptorium’ of the new world of words.
And these words are not just about language. Those glued in on social media will be clued in about the drift. For old-schoolers, like yours truly, a quick scan of the ‘words of the year’ announced recently by major dictionaries offers hints.
Rage Game
Let’s start with the Oxford English Dictionary. The top honours went to rage bait.
The usage is defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement”.
Usage of the word tripled in the past 12 months, according to Oxford’s language data.
“Where last year’s choice, brain rot, captured the mental drain of endless scrolling, rage bait shines a light on the content purposefully engineered to spark outrage and drive clicks,” says Oxford Languages president Casper Grathwohl.
“Together, they form a powerful cycle where outrage sparks engagement, algorithms amplify it, and constant exposure leaves us mentally exhausted. These words don’t just define trends; they reveal how digital platforms are reshaping our thinking and behaviour.”
Thankfully, the runners-up on the final shortlist sound harmless.
Aura farming: “the cultivation of an impressive, attractive, or charismatic persona or public image by behaving or presenting oneself in a way intended subtly to convey an air of confidence, coolness, or mystique”.
Biohack: “to attempt to improve or optimize one’s physical or mental performance, health, longevity, or wellbeing by altering one’s diet, exercise routine, or lifestyle, or by using other means such as drugs, supplements, or technological devices”.
Parasocial activity
The Cambridge Dictionary’s ‘Word of the Year’ is parasocial. It is defined as “involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series, etc., or an artificial intelligence”.
Do note the last two words.
“It’s interesting from a language point of view because it has made the transition from an academic term to one used by ordinary people in their social media posts,” says Cambridge Dictionary chief editor Colin McIntosh.
“It also captures the zeitgeist of 2025, as the public’s fascination with celebrities and their lifestyles continues to reach new heights.”
Lightening up things, the shortlist includes ‘memeify’, which means “to turn an event, image, person, etc. into a meme (= an idea, joke, image, video, etc. that is spread very quickly on the internet)”
“It highlights how memes, in the tradition of satire, are a mode of both entertainment and communication, blurring the lines between joke and journalism to reframe politics, identity, crises, and culture,” the dictionary editors note.
Next up is vibey, which is used to describe a place that has “good vibes”.
On the wellness front, we have breathwork — “a technique that involves the conscious control of your breathing and is intended to produce physical and mental benefits”.
Here is one to watch out for: doom spending — “the activity of spending money that you do not have in order to make yourself feel better. People sometimes engage in it when they feel anxious and uncertain about the future.”
Slop hop
Next, we hop to the US, where the Merriam-Webster Dictionary has declared slop as its ‘Word of the Year’. It is defined as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence”.
“Like slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don’t want to touch. Slop oozes into everything. The original sense of the word, in the 1700s, was ‘soft mud’. In the 1800s it came to mean ‘food waste’ (as in ‘pig slop’), and then more generally, ‘rubbish’ or ‘a product of little or no value’,” say the dictionary’s “human editors”.
“In 2025, amid all the talk about AI threats, slop set a tone that’s less fearful, more mocking. The word sends a little message to AI: when it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes you don’t seem too superintelligent.”
I noted two other interesting usages relevant to the times we live in on the shortlist:
Touch grass — “to participate in normal activities in the real world especially as opposed to online experiences and interactions”.
Performative — “made or done for show (as to bolster one’s own image or make a positive impression on others)”.
“We saw performative politics and activism, performative wokeness and patriotism, and even performative matcha,” the “human editors” note.
“Perhaps top among the phrases was performative male, used to describe a young man pursuing progressive women by doing things (carrying feminist literature in a tote bag, for example) those women probably like.” LOL!
What’s this 67?
Finally, we check out Dictionary.com. I was forwarded about this one by my 10-year-old editor at large at home. Seeing the headline ‘Word of the Year’ on my laptop, he exclaimed: “I am sure it’s going to be six-seven.”
“What’s that?” I asked, as he has been my Gen Alpha lingo guru. “You won’t get it,” he smirked.
He was right. I am yet to figure out what this ‘67’ means. And I am not alone.
“Well… it’s complicated,” say Dictionary.com editors.
“Some say it means ‘so-so’, or ‘maybe this, maybe that’. Perhaps the most defining feature of 67 is that it’s impossible to define. It’s meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical. In other words, it has all the hallmarks of brain rot.” Ha!
Skibidi times ahead, they say. But, all is not lost to Tralalero Tralala.
Three of my fave words from the year come from the old-world charm of the Oxford Dictionary’s word entries from “around the world”.
One is gigil from Tagalog. OED executive editor Danica Salazar writes that it’s “a feeling we get when we see someone or something cute, a feeling so intense that it gives us the irresistible urge to tightly clench our hands, grit our teeth, and pinch or squeeze whomever or whatever it is we find so adorable, whether it be a chubby-cheeked baby or a fluffy little kitten”.
Elaborating on borrowing “untranslatable words” from other languages, Danica drops clues on two more:.
A particular word for the action of sitting outside (in nature) enjoying a beer, like the one Norwegians have — utepils.
A specific word for sunlight dappling through leaves, just like speakers of Japanese do — komorebi.
Cheers to that, and wish you a Happy New Year brimming with main character energy!