Buzzwords 2025: All the words and phrases that went viral this year
2025 saw the internet crashing viral and bizarre words and phrases from rage bait, 6 7 to otrovert. Here is a look at all the words that went viral this year.
This was the year the internet collectively agreed that if life is confusing, at least we can label it. Every emotion, habit and coping mechanism got a buzzword makeover, preferably something catchy enough to trend on Reels, double up as a headline, and start a dinner-table debate. Here is a look at all the words that created a buzz, including bizarre ones and others that dictionaries deserved the title of Word of the Year.
Parasocial
The Cambridge Dictionary declared 'parasocial' as its Word of the Year in 2025, noting that lookups and public conversation about one-sided emotional bonds surged across news and social platforms. The word ‘Parasocial’ captures a distinctly modern kind of connection: when you feel close to someone you’ve never actually met.
That surge began with a spike in interest earlier this year, when popular YouTuber IShowSpeed publicly blocked a fan who had described themselves as his “number one parasocial,” an incident that reignited debate about fan boundaries and online intimacy.
Rage bait
This was declared as the Word of the Year by Oxford this year. The term describes online content deliberately designed to provoke anger, outrage, or strong negative emotions to drive engagement (likes, shares, comments) and traffic, often for profit or attention, by exploiting human reactions to frustrating, provocative, or offensive material.
It's a manipulative tactic similar to clickbait but specifically targets anger, fueling online discourse and social media algorithms that reward such high-intensity interactions.
6 7 (six seven)
6-7 or ‘six-seven’ became Dictionary.com's word of the year in 2025. Dictionary.com explained that the trend traces back to a song titled “Doot Doot (6 7)” by artist Skrilla. From there, it snowballed. A string of viral videos featuring basketball players and a kid now nicknamed the “67 Kid” helped push it into mainstream slang. No one actually agrees on what “67” means.
Dictionary.com described it as “so-so” or “maybe this, maybe that.” But the platform admitted the term’s power lies in its vagueness. The word connects a generation that speaks in irony, humour, and digital shorthand.
Vibe coding
Collins Dictionary selected ‘vibe coding’ as its Word of the Year for 2025, marking a turning point in how people build software and interact with technology. The word refers to creating apps or websites by conversing with artificial intelligence instead of manually writing lines of code. The term was first introduced by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy in February when he encouraged developers to “forget the code even exists” and instead “give in to the vibes.” What started as an experimental concept quickly turned into a mainstream trend, spreading across developer communities and tech companies worldwide.
Aura farming
This was one of the runner-ups to becoming Word of the Year by Oxford. It is slang for intentionally cultivating a cool, charismatic presence or vibe, often through stylish, effortless, or repetitive actions to gain social clout or online attention, inspired by video game concepts where you "farm" points or items.
It's about projecting an impressive, confident energy without seeming like you're trying too hard, popularised by viral videos of people (like Indonesian dancer Rayyan Arkan Dikha) performing cool, consistent moves.
Biohack
Another one of Oxford's runner-up words, it means making small, data-driven changes to your diet, lifestyle, and environment to optimise your body's functions for better health, performance, and longevity. It is essentially taking control of your own biology through self-experimentation, from simple diet tweaks and sleep optimisation to using wearable tech and more advanced techniques. It's a "do-it-yourself" approach to well-being, using science and technology to hack your biological processes.
Otrovert
A new personality type emerged this year, beyond introvert and extrovert, filling the grey area between the two. Called an ‘otrovert’, it covers the grey area between an extrovert and an introvert. Psychiatrist Dr Rami Kaminski came up with it and described the term as a ‘person who feels no sense of belonging to any group’.
The traits include feelings such as attending a party but interacting with a limited set of people; forming genuine bonds with select individuals; and tending to be more independent thinkers, resilient, and creative.
The great lock-in
The word took off on social media platforms this year as a kind of self-improvement marathon for the final months of the year (roughly September-December), encouraging intense, distraction-free focus on personal goals like fitness, finances, or learning new skills, essentially getting a head start on New Year's resolutions by "locking in" discipline and building habits through intense self-improvement before the year ends.
Clock it
"Clock it" is modern slang, often Gen Z, meaning to notice, recognise, or call out a hidden truth, motive, or vibe, usually with playful sass, like "I see what you're doing!" or "You got busted!" It comes from older slang (ballroom culture) where "clocking" meant noticing someone's real self (e.g., gender), but now it's broadly used to acknowledge when someone exposes a secret or says something sharp, sometimes with a specific hand gesture.
