Macquarie’s word of the year is a load of slop
The federal government has been working on a national roadmap for the use of AI.
“Low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors, and not requested by the user.”
That’s the official definition of “AI slop”, which has just been selected as Macquarie Dictionary’s 2025 word of the year by both an official committee and a public vote in the “people’s choice” award.
The Australian English dictionary says its word of the year often reflects societal change, noting that while AI isn’t new, it is now affecting people’s lives more directly.
AI-generated content is cheap and can quickly gain traction when shared online – even when it is “slop”.
Its proliferation on Reddit was highlighted earlier this year after a trending post about an affair was found to be likely written by AI, and one analysis has estimated that more than half of the longer English-language posts on LinkedIn are AI-generated.
An article from The Conversation argued that AI-generated slop was just one element of the “enshittification” of the web – another term that should perhaps have been in contention for word of the year.
“We understand now in 2025 what we mean by slop – AI generated slop, which lacks meaningful content or use,” said the Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year committee.
“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?”
Source: Macquarie Dictionary
The Macquarie word of the year comes just a week after Cambridge Dictionary revealed its word for 2025: “parasocial”.
It is used to describe the connection someone feels with a person they see in the media but don’t know – for example, Taylor Swift and her American footballer fiancé Travis Kelce. As with AI slop, parasocial is said to capture the 2025 zeitgeist and has a strong link to the alternative reality of the online world.
Macquarie’s word of the year committee – made up of the dictionary’s editorial team, along with crossword maker, radio host and writer David Astle and ABC language research specialist Tiger Webb – awarded two “honourable mentions” from their shortlist, the first of which also comes from AI.
“Clanker” is an artificial-intelligence-driven robot that completes tasks normally performed by a human. It was popularised in the animated TV series Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008–14).
“We’ve all had to prompt engineer and fight our way past a clanker to get to a real person this past year,” the committee said.
“That there is such negative language fast appearing to describe these AI-driven services is a reflection of our frustration and dissatisfaction.”
The other honourable mention went to “medical misogyny”, a term used to describe entrenched prejudice against females in the medical system, especially in the area of reproductive health.
A number of national surveys over the past two years have shone a spotlight on medical misogyny, with one finding that two out of three women reported health-care-related bias and discrimination.
The Macquarie Dictionary’s editors come up with a longlist of words across 13 categories each year, before whittling this down to a shortlist from which the word of the year is chosen.
Other 2025 shortlisted words were:
Ate (and left no crumbs): To perform or execute something flawlessly.
Attention economy: An economy in which human attention is treated as a major commodity, especially in advertising.
Australian sushi: Any of various thick, uncut sushi rolls with the nori wrapped around the filling, and often containing non-traditional fillings.
BAL rating: A system of assessing a building’s potential exposure to ember attack, radiant heat and direct flame of a bushfire.
Bathroom camping: The act of isolating oneself in a bathroom or bathroom cubicle for a period of time.
Bird-dogging: Confronting a politician at a public event with direct questions or issues.
Blind box: A type of mystery box which contains an unseen collectible toy or figurine.
Femgore: Subgenre of horror in which female protagonists are given agency over the narrative.
Ozempic face: A condition resulting from the use of weight-loss drug Ozempic.
Quadball: The new name for real-life quidditch.
Roman Empire: Any of various events, interests, subjects, etc., that one finds themselves frequently thinking about, especially one considered unusual.
Six-Seven: A nonsense expression with no meaning, often accompanied by a specific hand gesture. (Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan created a stir when she used the term at a public announcement last month.)
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