Each year, the Macquarie Dictionary calls together a select Committee to discuss the new words and definitions that have entered the Macquarie Dictionary over the past year. The aim of this is to select one of these to be awarded the Committee’s Choice Word of the Year.
As part of this process, our editors create a longlist of words across 13 categories which, over the course of a few hours, are whittled down into a shortlist. And from this, the Word of the Year is chosen.
The shortlist is then opened to the public to register what you think the Word of the Year should be. The word with the most votes is awarded the People’s Choice Word of the Year.
You can review the final shortlist here (and for those interested, the longlist here). Thank you for helping us decide on the defining new word of 2025!
Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year 2025
The Word of the Year often reflects a major aspect of society or societal change throughout the year, and this year’s results are no different. While large language models and AI as a whole are not new, it is undeniable how they are now directly affecting our lives and have become a major part of public discourse over the past 12 months.
Committee Winner
AI SLOP
noun Colloquial low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors, and not requested by the user.
‘We understand now in 2025 what we mean by slop — AI generated slop, which lacks meaningful content or use. While in recent years we’ve learnt to become search engineers to find meaningful information, we now need to become prompt engineers in order to wade through the AI slop. Slop in this sense will be a robust addition to English for years to come. The question is, are the people ingesting and regurgitating this content soon to be called AI sloppers?’
–THE COMMITTEE
Committee Honourable Mentions
CLANKER
noun Colloquial (usually derogatory) an artificial intelligence-driven robot which completes tasks that are normally performed by a human.
[popularised in the animated television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008–14), in which the word was used to describe metallic androids who produced clanking sounds when moving]
‘We’ve all had to prompt engineer and fight our way past a clanker to get to a real person this past year. That there is such negative language fast appearing to describe these AI-driven services is a reflection of our frustration and dissatisfaction.’
–THE COMMITTEE
MEDICAL MISOGYNY
noun entrenched prejudice against females in the context of medical treatment and knowledge, especially in the area of reproductive health.
‘It’s not simply about where funding goes or the prioritising of male issues over female issues, nor is it simply relevant to the events of 2025, but it’s about what’s been happening, on so many levels, since antiquity. Even our language for anatomy mirrors this – with more than 800 anatomical parts of the body named after men.’
–THE COMMITTEE
People’s Choice Winner
The voting public ate (and left no crumbs) in crowning their winner! For a second year running (and only the fourth time in history), the public have aligned with the Committee’s choice by selecting AI slop to be crowned People’s Choice Word of the Year 2025!
AI SLOP
noun Colloquial low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors, and not requested by the user.
People’s Choice Honourable Mentions
MEDICAL MISOGYNY
noun entrenched prejudice against females in the context of medical treatment and knowledge, especially in the area of reproductive health.
‘Not only aligning with the Committee for the winner, the public were overwhelmingly clear in their call to arms in bringing attention to medical misogyny.’
–THE COMMITTEE
ATTENTION ECONOMY
noun an economy in which human attention is treated as a major commodity, especially in advertising.
‘The world we live in now is one in which companies are yelling for our eyeballs. They’re that insistent seller at your doorstep. We experience this through the absolute deluge of stimuli, options, platforms, reels. If they get just two minutes of our time, they’re already ahead in the deal.’
–THE COMMITTEE
The Committee this year was comprised of:
- Editorial Team at Macquarie Dictionary
- David Astle – crossword maker, radio host, and writer
- Tiger Webb – language research specialist, ABC
Shortlist
