"The dictionary's official definition of the word is "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence," a far cry from its original meaning. When the term was first coined in the 1700s, slop meant "soft mud," before slowly morphing into a synonym for "rubbish." Today, it's the perfect four-letter word for the state of the internet."
"It's official: 2025 was the year of slop. Merriam-Webster just announced in a post that its "human editors" have chosen "slop" as the 2025 Word of the Year. "In 2025, amid all the talk about AI threats, slop set a tone that's less fearful, more mocking," the dictionary's post reads. "The word sends a little message to AI: when it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes you don't seem too superintelligent.""
Merriam-Webster selected "slop" as the 2025 Word of the Year and defined it as digital content of low quality produced in quantity by AI. The word evolved from an 18th-century meaning of "soft mud" into a synonym for rubbish and now labels pervasive online junk. Slop set a mocking tone about AI replacing human creativity and surfaced across formats: click-harvesting feeds, fabricated rescue clips after L.A. fires, and a Cornell study warning of web suffocation. Instances escalated to fake Holocaust content, political uses, AI tributes after an assassination, and heavy marketing infiltration that forced platform filters.
Read at Fast Company
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