Our obsession with endless online scrolling has led “brain rot” to be picked as the Oxford dictionaries’ word of the year. Oxford University Press said the phrase “gained new prominence in 2024”, with its use soaring by 230% from the year before.
The rise is due to concerns about the “impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media”. The term is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging”.
Boffins said the word of the year is meant to be “a word or expression that reflects a defining theme from the past 12 months”. The expression was chosen by a combination of public vote and language analysis by Oxford lexicographers.
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It beat five other finalists – demure, slop, dynamic pricing, romantasy and lore. Despite being a modern phenomenon, the first recorded use of “brain rot” was by writer Henry David Thoreau in his 1854 essay “Walden”.
Oxford Languages President Casper Grathwohl said that in its modern sense, “brain rot speaks to one of the perceived dangers of virtual life, and how we are using our free time”.
He said: “It feels like a rightful next chapter in the cultural conversation about humanity and technology. It’s not surprising that so many voters embraced the term, endorsing it as our choice this year.”
“Demure” surged following a social media trend that refers to reserved behaviour, while “dynamic pricing” grew following the Oasis tickets scandal.
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Meanwhile, “lore” is a body of facts and background information related to someone or something, while “romantasy” is a fiction genre combining romance and fantasy.
And “slop” means low-quality content online generated using artificial intelligence.
Oxford’s word of the year in 2023 was “rizz,” a riff on charisma, used to describe someone’s ability to attract or seduce another person. Collins Dictionary’s 2024 word of the year is “brat”, the album title by Charli XCX that became a summer-living ideal.
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