What Do 2025's English Words of the Year Mean?
Each year, famous dictionaries like Oxford and Cambridge choose a word they feel represents the mood or major events of the past 12 months. This time, we'll take a look at four different choices and see what they mean.
2025’s Words of the Year
6-7
"6-7" was the choice for word of the year at Dictionary.com. It gained a lot of popularity in 2025, especially on social media. You might see it written as "67" or "6 7," but remember that it's pronounced "six-seven."
So, what does it mean? It's most basic meaning is "average" or "not very special." For example:
A
I heard that movie was pretty good. How was it?
B
6-7.
So think of it like a rating between one and 10. A score of six or seven isn't terrible, but it's also not great.
This is only one meaning, however. 6-7 has become even more well known because it's often very difficult to define. In fact, sometimes it doesn't mean anything at all!
So if you're ever confused when you hear it, don't worry — maybe no one else understands either!
Rage bait
The Oxford Dictionary's choice for 2025 was "rage bait."
Bait is used to attract things. For example, fishermen use bait to attract and catch fish. And online, websites or videos may use "clickbait" to get the attention of readers or viewers with something funny or surprising.
In 2025, however, many creators used a new tool called "rage bait."
Rage is extreme anger, and some people try to use that powerful emotion as a way to get people to interact or engage with something.
If an article's headline or a video's preview image makes someone mad, they might click or watch it just to post an angry comment about it. And since many creators don't care if their engagement is positive or negative, using rage bait has become a popular technique for getting attention.
That YouTuber's videos are just rage bait designed to get more views.
For many people, even the regular daily news contains a lot of rage bait.
The rage bait Instagram post led to thousands of angry comments.
Parasocial
The Cambridge Dictionary's word of 2025 is "parasocial."
Do you feel you have a connection with someone like an influencer or podcast host even though you've never actually met them?
If so, you're part of a parasocial relationship — "parasocial" refers 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."
In other words, it describes a relationship that is one-sided: Person A knows Person B, but Person B does not know Person A.
Although this word isn't often used in daily conversations, it describes something that has become very common in the modern era.
People around the world developed more parasocial relationships due to the Covid-19 pandemic limiting human contact.
Fans of a fictional character may experience parasocial grief if that character dies in the movie, book, etc.
Researchers have discovered that a growing number of people are developing parasocial relationships with AI, which can be dangerous.
We have a Daily News lesson about parasocial relationships you can find here.
Slop
Finally, the Merriam-Webster dictionary chose "slop" as their word of the year.
The adjective "sloppy" describes something messy, unorganized or dirty. For example, a poor student may write a sloppy research paper, and a "sloppy Joe" is a kind of meaty sandwich that gets messy very easily.
As a noun, "slop" refers to junk or something of poor quality. And in 2025, people began using it to talk about things created by AI — particularly things like images, videos and music designed to trick people into thinking it was made by humans.
Music streaming services like Spotify are now full of AI slop made by fake artists who don't exist.
Lots of ads I see online now are just AI slop.
As technology improves, it will get harder to separate AI slop from what's real.
Wrap-up
What do you think of this year's choices? Do you have your own pick for the word of 2025?
Why not book a one-on-one English lesson with an Engoo tutor and have a chat about it? Engoo has thousands of friendly, professional tutors ready to help you improve your English, one discussion at a time.
