If you’ve been scrolling too long on social media, you might be suffering from “brain rot,” the word of 2024, per the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary.
After public consultation, Oxford University Press announced its choice—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” as well as “something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration”—on Monday. “Brain rot” beat out five other finalists, including “dynamic pricing,” “lore,” “romantasy,” “slop,” and Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year “demure.”
“‘Brain rot’ speaks to one of the perceived dangers of virtual life, and how we are using our free time,” Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages, said in the announcement. “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.”
The first recorded use of “brain rot,” according to Oxford University Press, was in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, published in 1854. “While England endeavours to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?” wrote Thoreau in his treatise on transcendentalism.
But the term has gained new traction in the past year among Gen Z and Gen Alpha. “These communities have amplified the expression through social media channels, the very place said to cause ‘brain rot’,” Grathwohl said. “It demonstrates a somewhat cheeky self-awareness in the younger generations about the harmful impact of social media that they’ve inherited.”
Oxford University Press is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its lexicographers naming an English-language word or expression that reflects the world during the last 12 months. “Looking back at the Oxford Word of the Year over the past two decades, you can see society’s growing preoccupation with how our virtual lives are evolving, the way internet culture is permeating so much of who we are and what we talk about,” said Grathwohl. Last year, the accolade went to “rizz,” a Gen-Z slang abbreviation of charisma. In 2022, it was “goblin mode”—referring to “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy” behavior. And in 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and discourse about vaccinations, it was “vax.”
Other publications that have named a 2024 word of the year include Collins Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary, Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary, and The Economist. Collins chose “brat,” an adjective it said gained a new definition—“characterized by a confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude”—after British pop artist Charli XCX’s hit album inspired a global cultural phenomenon and aesthetic; Cambridge chose “manifest,” meaning “to imagine achieving something you want, in the belief that doing so will make it more likely to happen,” though Cambridge noted “experts warn that manifesting has no scientific validity”; Macquarie chose “enshittification,” defined as “the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking”; and, in the world’s biggest-ever election year, The Economist chose “kakistocracy,” defined as the “rule of the worst.”
