Skibidi do-dah!?
TikTok and GenZ are changing the way we talk, creating a shared language that helps us give meaning to what makes today's world unique
The Oxford University Press has recently cited the words “skibidi,” “brain-rot” and “rizz” among the most significant new words to pop up in the English language. They’re considered slang by Generations Alpha and Z, but top linguists say they’ve been added to the Oxford English Dictionary because of their significance as words “permeating much of who we are in this time”—and capturing how much we’re feeling overwhelmed.
NEW YORK—When stationed in Japan some years back as Tokyo Bureau Chief for Hearst News, I worked a side gig as an English news reader for NHK, Japan’s public broadcast news station. I was paired with Ray Miles, a BBC news editor also then stationed in Japan, and twice a week, the two of us would deliver a live, one-hour news program in English from breaking news scripts translated by our Japanese colleagues.
Ray was the perfect anchor. Off-camera, he had a wicked sense of humor. But what made him most popular with the staff was his love of etymology—the origin of English words and how their historical meanings would change over time based on how society was evolving. Though not what one might call a “word nerd,” Ray would occasionally have us over to his apartment near the broadcast center, where he kept a rare, unabridged copy of the Oxford English Dictionary—several thick paper volumes of English words and their meanings, with some of their origins several centuries old, and laid out in fascinating detail.
After dinner, he’d break us into two teams to guess the history of a variety of words we’d ask him to look up for us to determine their origins. The prize for those who’d guess how their meanings reflected history correctly (or close) would be awarded, after five or six rounds of the game, a bottle of high-grade sake contributed by our Japanese colleagues.
Ray tells me that NHK no longer plays that word game, which he contributed to NHK before he returned to London, and I to Washington, D.C. But some years thereafter, the Oxford University Press began creating its own etymology game, and in 2004, assigned its staff of lexicographers and linguists to choose a Word of the Year annually, from among some of the new slang words created across a variety of countries each year which would especially help us all to understand social change.
Initially, some of the words chosen referred to how people were beginning to use digital media. In 2005—the dawn of social media and the year YouTube was founded—the Word of the Year was podcast,; in 2015, the cry-laugh emoji was selected, and in 2013, selfie took the honors. Last year and this year, the annual word-choice shifted again, to words mostly inspired by internet culture and how we all feel using these new tools.
This year’s word, announced December 2nd, is the term “brain rot”— which refers to what the Oxford Press says societies this year felt were a contentious round of global elections—triggering “brain rot” brought on by hours of scrolling through low-value social media content and sharing a semi-ironic attitude toward screen addiction.
Old Words Morphing
“The term ‘brain rot’ reflects our increasing reliance on Internet content,” says Sophia Smith Galer, a former BBC journalist, linguist and author of the forthcoming book, Linguicide. The term increased in general usage frequency by 230% between 2023 and 2024. The first recorded use of ‘brain rot’ was found in 1854, in Henry David Thoreau’s book, Walden. Since then, it has taken on new significance as an expression to describe the over-saturation of information (good or bad, true or false) in the digital age. “It’s now a ‘word language’ for those who are chronically online,” says Neil Edgeller, a director of BBC’s Learning English program.
“Language is obviously the social tool we all use to communicate, but it’s all so different now, depending on the generation which is talking,” Edgeller says. “We alter our language now depending on who we’re talking to. And when it comes to young people we’re seeing, particularly with the Alpha and GenZ generations, there is a whole new range of vocabulary being used now by young people online that seems completely and utterly exclusive—but is already being spread to the general population.”
Consider the slang word rizz, last year’s Word of the Year, which references swagger or confidence, and originates from the word charisma. Like other new words surfacing from internet culture, it has morphed quickly over time to now specifically mean one’s ability to attract someone into a relationship—or situationship —another new word invented by GenZ and making its way into general usage.
Algorithms Gaining Influence
Historically, slang has shaped our language for decades. But what’s different about today’s slang, says Adam Aleksic, a Harvard linguistics graduate, is the power and reach of new words created online, thanks to algorithms powering so much of today’s viral content distribution instantly to millions. Aleksic, the author of Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language, says “a lot of words now are coming into general circulation from different cultures, including Black and Latino subcultures and LGBTQ youth culture in the U.S.”
“Youth culture has always created words of its own, but what these latest words of the year are showing us is a shift toward an expansion of internet culture in general,” added Aleksic, also known as @etymology_nerd on Instagram and etymologynerd on TikTok, where he has millions of likes and thousands of followers who turn to him regularly to understand some of the new words morphing into new meanings. “The pace with which algorithms pick up on some of these new words is hyper-fast. As an algorithm begins to interpret these words as new ‘likes,’ it then starts automatically pushing these words more expansively and repetitively across social networks in record time.”
Aleksic says that in this way, algorithms are now enabling the creation of a new shared language that is largely exclusive to GenZ but is helping to give meaning to how digital culture is spilling over into offline spaces, especially the workplace.
Taylor Lorenz, a former Washington Post reporter and author of Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet, says "language change today is extremely tied to social media, virality, trends and memes, so words come and go faster than they’ve ever gone before.” Lorenz, now host of the @Power User podcast, says generations Alpha and GenZ are creating what she calls a “whole new vocabulary for all of us”—which matters “because youth culture has never before had such fast and wide reach into society, giving it influence other generations didn’t even come close to having as powerfully before.”
A Short Guide
With the year-end holidays fast approaching, here are some other terms created online that are gaining popularity—just in case your holiday gatherings are already introducing new words into your family events. Sus is a play on the word suspicious and can be used to describe someone who did well or surpassed expectations, or to describe sketchy behavior; vibing is a term now used to describe a state of being peaceful and having a good time, and fam is a word that can be used to describe friends.
For some old words now being used to convey slightly new meanings online, check out these terms also deemed by Oxford lexicographers this year to be culturally significant:
Demure— A person who is reserved or restrained in appearance or behavior. It’s a word which has been around for centuries but took on new meaning over the summer after TikToker Jools Lebron went viral in a video showcasing how she did her makeup for work. “Very demure, very mindful,” she said in a TikTok video in a tone clearly dripping with sarcasm, poking fun at conformist corporate culture (and also what would later be coined as “brain rot”). From there, Lebron’s take on “demure” went viral, dominating the TikTok algorithm for several weeks with videos of others showing how they, too, were “demure,” “mindful” and “cutesy.”
Dynamic pricing—The practice of changing the price of a product or service to reflect current market conditions was originally termed by economists in the late 1920s to refer to an unpopular practice, but surged back into heavy usage this year when there was a spike in demand for highly sought-after Taylor Swift Eras Tour concert tickets.
Slop—Art, writing or other content generated using artificial intelligence, shared and distributed online in an indiscriminate or intrusive way, and characterized as being of low quality, inauthentic, or inaccurate.
Skibidi, evolving
But there’s one new word—Skibidi—that’s bursting into more general usage now and is among the first word contributions emerging from Generation Alpha, those born after the early 2010s. It’s defined loosely as meaning “cool” or “bad” and can also be used to describe someone who’s obsessing over something unimportant. Skibidi also is a nonsensical word, primarily popularized through the viral YouTube series Skidibi Toilet, and is also considered a meme-like term with no concrete meaning, often used to express something absurd, strange or even slightly unsettling, depending on context. Maddy Buxton, culture and trends manager at YouTube, says that “Skibidi Toilet” is a phenomenon unlike any other the platform has seen before. More recently, the term Skibidi Rizzler is being used—and is being defined in some circles as someone with charisma who also is a bit odd—or worse, ultimately unimportant.
The virality of skibidi “has become one of the biggest cultural moments,” Buxton recently told the Washington Post. “I’ve never quite seen anything blow up like this (word). It started as a meme in 2023 but it’s evolved this year into this very complex storyline with a lot of hidden meaning that people are very eager to break down and try to understand.” And it’s still gaining steam.
As social media evolves internet culture even further, expect to see more words seeking to capture or define a new cultural moment or behavior we all may be experiencing. Casper Grathwol, president of Oxford Languages, says internet culture is creating new words which “remind us of the power that language holds to shape the world around us.”
“Expect internet culture to keep helping us to understand change, and to create new memes and social narratives to help us understand our dance with AI and where we’re headed. The creation of new words online to help us capture and understand the future of work and tech is just getting started.”
Got any new terms or slang you wish to add to the list? Add a comment to share, and thank you for your readership!
I hear many of these Gen Z words in my house on a daily basis! Here’s another word for your collection: Sigma — which teens now use to describe a person who is “a super cool and successful leader, who — instead of leading the pack like an Alpha — is a lone wolf who leads themself.”
Thank you, Kate! That's a good one. Heard that one the other day over lunch with some of my students. Thanks for adding it to the list!