Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and we'll close today with a peek at the 2025 Word(s) of the Year. As I said before the break, as chosen by a few different dictionary publishers, do you know the word "parasocial", or the term "rage bait"? Do you use the term "6-7" to describe any people or things, or your feelings about them? Those have each been named words of the year, the selection of which we might acknowledge is no easy feat considering the sheer volume of slang output we see on the Internet these days.

Joining us now to go over those three words and more, and the cultural shifts that they represent, and that pave the way for their popularity is Ben Zimmer, linguistic language columnist, and Chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society. Ben, always great to have you on the show. Welcome back to WNYC for another year end Word Crawl.

Ben Zimmer: Hi, Brian, always great to be on talking to you about the words of the year.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, do you have a word of the year? Have one that's very 2025? 212-433-WNYC, call or text. This can just be a word you've been hearing a lot more this year for whatever reason. Maybe it's been in the news, maybe it's from your kids, maybe it's a word that def specific to your life, or a society-wide observation that you've made. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692 call or text. Or even if you want to weigh in, agreeing or disagreeing with any of the words of the year that these dictionaries have picked.

Ben, I actually want to start with some breaking news. I see that Merriam Webster announced their word of the year early this morning, and that word is "slop", and not the kind you find in a pig pen, I assume, right?

Ben Zimmer: [chuckles] No, that's not the slop people are talking about these days. Yes, Merriam Webster just came out with their announcement as their word of the year, and they define slop as digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence, and so this is AI slop that we're talking about, and this has unfortunately become all too common in our experience of just everything that we see on our screens these days, and slop, unfortunately, sums up a lot of that AI generated content that we're seeing these days.

Brian Lehrer: I can see the heads bobbing out there saying, "Yes, I have to find my way through that slop. Slush my way through that slop, or whatever all the time." Actually, I see that Australia's Macquarie. Is that how you say it? Dictionary made a similar pick, but with a qualifier. AI slop in particular.

Ben Zimmer: Yes, that's right. Macquarie is an Australian dictionary publisher. They went with AI slop, so the word of the year that I'm involved in, the American Dialect Society's Choice in 2024, we actually had AI slop as one of our nominees. Maybe we were ahead of the curve there a little bit. It lost out in the digital word of the year category to brain rot. What's interesting though, is that we don't even need to say, "AI slop", anymore. Now in 2025, just saying slop is enough to get across what you're talking about. People know that you're talking about something that's AI generated just by using the word "slop".

Brian Lehrer: I want to bring up the Dictionary.com pick, which is 6-7, and I think it's almost generational, whether you know about it. If you're young enough, or if you have kids of the right age, and it's probably the one with the least etymological history, so for the uninitiated, can you try to define 6-7?

Ben Zimmer: You're asking me to define 6-7? Well, it's notoriously difficult, or perhaps, impossible to define, but this sequence of two numbers just emerged as a meme in 2025, particularly associated with Gen Alpha, that young generation of tweens and young teens, and it started, it came out of a song from last year by the rapper Skrilla that was called Doot Doot (6 7), and it just took off as something that you would use on TikTok or Instagram.

There was a basketball player named LaMelo ball who's about 6'7". It got associated with him, and then, suddenly, every young person was saying it in this mischievous way, let's say, where it doesn't necessarily mean anything at all, but it's just an example of what sometimes gets called brain rot, this idea that meme generated language, and discourse for young people. It doesn't necessarily have to have any concrete meaning.

It's just something that you enjoy for the sheer absurdity, the sheer nonsensical power of just saying these two numbers, and it obviously perplexed a lot of older people in 2025, so that was an interesting choice for Dictionary.com to make for their word of the year, really two numbers.

Brian Lehrer: It's almost the way you're describing it, a non sequitur, where I guess I've heard it is more like, "Meh." Like, "Do you like that person?" "Ah, 6-7."

Ben Zimmer: It can be used that way. That is what. Especially, if you use the hand gesture that goes with it, with the palms facing up, and moving up and down, it can mean just sort of like, "Ah, so, so," or maybe some of this, some of that, but more often, it's just used to use it, and it's really the social function of identifying yourself as a young person who's very steeped in online culture more than any meaning that a dictionary could ascribe to it.

Brian Lehrer: I should have pulled that Skrilla track to come into this. Jennifer in Middlesex county is a retired teacher who wants to comment on 6-7. Jennifer, you're at WNYC. Hello.

Jennifer: Hello. You mentioned the word "absurd", so according to my college kid, son, he said that this Gen Alpha's humor is absurdist humor. We talked about what does it mean? I came to the conclusion that it really doesn't mean anything purposefully, and it's payback time. Well, these kids have grown up with fake news this, and is this true? As they move through the world, they have to measure the veracity of everything around them, and so this is almost like, "Well, this is what you get."

Then, this word has no meaning. We refuse to ascribe meaning to it, and you just deal with it. As a teacher, I've seen 6-7 mostly just used as a way of, it has no meaning. I will use it at the start of a class and say, "Six", and get the kids to say, "Seven", in response. Just call in response to get their attention, but I think it's a sign of the times that the kids growing up really don't know what is true, and so what does it matter anymore?

Brian Lehrer: Jennifer, thank you very much, Nick, in Manhasset has a word he wants to nominate as a word of the year. Hi, Nick, you're on WNYC. Yes.

Nick: My word is kakistocracy. That's government by the least qualified, most incompetent people, and I think that's a perfect summary of Donald Trump's administration, starting with him, the least qualified, most incompetent person to ever serve as president, and most of his appointments to the cabinet and to federal agencies.

Brian Lehrer: Nick, thank you very much. Ben, people can have whatever opinions they have of the Trump administration, but I will agree that until this year, the word "kakistocracy" had never come up on the show, and even before Nick's call, it has.

Ben Zimmer: [chuckles] Yes, I think I remember hearing about that in the first Trump term as well, but, yes, that's an example of an old word that suddenly becomes relevant and useful. Government by the worst, or least qualified people.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go down some more of these dictionary picks for word of the year. Cambridge Dictionary. Parasocial, what does that mean?

Ben Zimmer: Well, parasocial is when you imagine, it describes an imagined relationship that one might have with someone you don't know. It could be a celebrity, it could be a fictional character, or these days, it could even be an AI bot that you imagine a relationship with. This is a word that goes all the way back to the 1950s. It was originally used by sociologists to describe the relationship people felt with people they saw on television on their TV shows in the 1950s.

Now, we have all sorts of new media, and new parasocial relationships, whether it's imagining, you really know what Taylor Swift is like, or as Cambridge Dictionary pointed out, now we have artificial intelligence creating these parasocial relationships.

Brian Lehrer: Another one from the Collins Dictionary, Vibe coding. You know that one?

Ben Zimmer: Yes, that's an interesting one. Also, AI related, like so many of the terms that we're talking about in 2025. This is when you use AI to, basically, write computer code, instead of actually having to write the code yourself, because you can use ChatGPT, or other large language models to just make these prompts with your just natural language and say, "Make this for me." You're just doing it with vibes, rather than even thinking about the code that's being made. That's a new way that programs and software might be getting coded, but it has its own pitfalls.

Brian Lehrer: From the Oxford English, we've got rage bait.

Ben Zimmer: Rage bait, yes. Now that's a great one, too. They define that as online content deliberately designed to elicit anger, or outrage by being frustrated, provocative, or offensive. It's a way to drive engagement. We've previously heard about clickbait, or engagement bait, but now it's really about stoking outrage, and so rage bait is a very pithy way to describe, again, a lot of the content that we have to engage with on the Internet.

Brian Lehrer: I mean, one could argue that's half the reason for the polarization, to the extreme extent that we have it in our country, because social media rewards you so much for posting rage bait.

Ben Zimmer: Indeed. Yes, I mean, and you could say a lot just about our current political situation just with that phrase "rage bait".

Brian Lehrer: Debra in Branchville has a possible word of the year. Hi, Debra.

Debra: Hi. Actually I have a question about the derivation of some other words of the year. I'm a writer. Words are my business, and I'm very interested in vocabulary, and I suddenly realized that people were using the word "agency" all the time, as in, "She didn't have the agency to escape her marriage." I thought, "What do you mean? Autonomy, self-control?"

For me, growing up, an agency was either a physical place, or I'd never heard it used in that term before, and suddenly the moment I did notice it, it seemed like it was everywhere, and to me it just seemed very-- I don't know, over the top. It just seemed very affected. The other thing that I really-- Does really drive me crazy is this misuse of the phrase. You do something by accident if you hadn't intended to do it, and you do something on purpose if you did, but I constantly hear young people saying, "Oh, I did it on accident."

Brian Lehrer: Oh, on accident. Debra, I have to leave it there because we're just about out of time. Quick thought on agency, like 10-second thought, Ben?

Ben Zimmer: [chuckles] Well, yes, I mean that's an example again of an old word that shifts semantically. We see that happening a lot. Slop is another example, can take on a new meaning. Also, before we go, I just want to encourage people to send their nominations for Word of the Year to the American Dialect Society. If you go to americandialect.org, we make our selection after the year is over in the first week of January, so we'll be accepting nominations from the public, so please send those in to the American Dialect--[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Maybe we will have to have you back, because so many people have others too, and everybody wants to talk about 6-7. Bye, Ben. Thanks.

Ben Zimmer: Thanks.

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