Oxford has named "brain rot" as its word of the year for 2024 amid concerns over endless social media scrolling and mind-numbing content.
"Brain rot" is defined as "an alleged deterioration of one's mental or intellectual state, especially as a result of excessive use of material (now especially online content) that is considered trivial or unchallenging".
More than 37.000 people voted for one of the six words shortlisted by Oxford University Press, which publishes the Oxford Dictionary, the Guardian reports.
Each year, Oxford announces the word of the year, which in previous years has included "rice", "goblin regime", "vax" and "climate emergency", in order to reflect current moods and trends.
Oxford University Press said the term "brain rot" gained new prominence this year as "a term used to express concern about the effects of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, particularly on social media".
Although it has recently gained importance, the first recorded use of the word was in 1854 in the book "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau.
Oxford Languages chairman Kasper Gretvol said brain rot speaks to one of the perceived dangers of virtual life and how we use our free time.
"It's fascinating that the word has been adopted by Generation Z and Alpha, the communities that are largely responsible for the use and creation of the digital content to which the term refers," Gretvol said.
The shortlist for the word of the year included the terms "decent" (demure) which refers to reserved or responsible behavior, "dynamic pricing" (dynamic pricing), where the price of a product or service varies in accordance with demand, "knowledge" (lore ) as a collection of facts and background information about someone or something, "romance" (romantasy), a genre of fiction combining romance and fantasy, and "slop" (slop) denoting low-quality online content generated using artificial intelligence.
The shortlist of words was decided by a four-member committee, and in the selection of the winners, public voting, comments and other analyzes were taken into account.
This year's Cambridge word, announced last month, was "manifest", which refers to thinking positively about a goal in the belief that doing so will make its achievement more likely.
The word has been searched 130.000 times in Cambridge's online dictionary.
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