'Brain rot' is the most popular word of 2024

More than 37,000 people voted to select the winning word from a shortlist of six compiled by Oxford University Press, publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary.

This annual award is intended to reflect the mood and trends of the year. “Brain rot” is defined as “a deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual abilities, especially as a result of excessive consumption of trivial or worthless material.”

The Oxford University Press says the word “brain rot” first appeared in Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 book Walden. The term gained prominence in 2024 as a way to reflect concerns about the effects of consuming too much poor-quality online content, especially on social media.

“Brain rot reflects one of the hidden dangers of the digital world and how we spend our free time,” said Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages. “It’s no surprise that many voters chose the term as this year’s choice.”

The five words on the shortlist that didn’t win were: “demure” (which became popular after a summer social media trend, referring to discreet or responsible behavior); “dynamic pricing” (prices that change based on demand); “lore” (a collection of basic knowledge and information about someone or something); “romantasy” (a genre of fiction that combines romance and fantasy) and “slop” (poor quality online content generated by artificial intelligence).

Unlike Oxford, Cambridge Dictionary announced its word of the year for 2024 last month as "manifest" - a trend that encourages imagining achieving a goal in the hope that it will become a reality. The word has been searched for 130,000 times on the Cambridge Dictionary website.