The Oxford Dictionary has announced “brain rot” as this year’s word of the year. The choice of this particular term is due to public concern about endless scrolling on social media and dumbing down content, as reported by The Guardian.
More than 37,000 people voted to help choose the winner from a list of six words compiled by Oxford University Press, publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary.
The annual prize, whose previous winners were “rizz” and “climate emergency,” aims to reflect the mood and trends of the year.
The journalists noted that the term “brain rot” is defined as “a perceived deterioration in a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially seen as the result of excessive consumption of material (now especially online content) that is considered trivial or meaningless.”
Oxford University Press says the term “gained new popularity in 2024 as a term used to reflect concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media.”
The article also noted that despite its recent popularity, the term was first used in Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden in 1854.