Merriam-Webster has selected "slop" for the dictionary company's 2025 word of the year. The leading lexicographers define slop 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 dictionary writes, adding that, in an age of AI anxiety, it is a term designed to communicate “a tone that’s less fearful, more mocking” of the technology.

Dec. 16, 2025 Get more news © 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC