The 2025 selection follows its predecessors, "brain rot" from 2024, "rizz" from 2023 and "goblin mode" from 2022.

“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.