2025’s Word of the Year Is a Number, Because Words Are Tired Too

KEY POINTS

•Glassdoor identified 'fatigue' as its 2025 Word of the Year, citing a 41% rise in mentions due to job hunting frustration.
•Collins Dictionary highlighted 'vibe coding,' where AI rapidly replaces coding efforts, reflecting tech's growing grip on work life.
•Dictionary.com broke tradition picking the numeral '67' as its Word of the Year, symbolizing the ambiguous, disenchanted mood of 2025.

In a dystopian April Fool's prank named 2025, dictionaries broke bad: Glassdoor crowned 'fatigue' after tired job seekers hit a 41% mention spike battling 'job huggers' in a 'low-hire, low-fire' system no one asked for. Collins coined 'vibe coding,' where AI writes your code because, why bother? Oxford fired back with 'rage bait,' tripling in use as we drown in outrage clicks. Cambridge branded 'parasocial' relationships the year’s romance, starring anime AI girlfriends from Grok stirring major emotional confusion. Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary rolled their eyes at 'AI slop'—those AI-generated cringe memos everyone's forced to read. Meanwhile, Dictionary.com got existential and picked '67' (pronounced 'six seven'), a cryptic number meaning 'meh'—or the official Gen Alpha shrug emoji—to sum up the year's collective 'so-so' life energy.