Merriam-Webster just officially recognized 1,400 new words, and they bring the lexicon of the AI era into the dictionary.
On average, Merriam-Webster adds about 1,000 new entries every year, usually in large batches. Its editors are constantly reading widely to identify emerging words, and then searching through databases to determine whether those words are being used frequently, meaningfully, and widely.
According to the company’s blog post on the topic, a word gets into a dictionary when it is “used by many people who all agree that it means the same thing.”
This year’s newly minted terms include the usual sprinkling of zeitgeisty additions, including “looksmaxxing,” “Sunday scaries,” “crashout,” and “neckbeard.” Meanwhile, the editors’ selection of tech-ajacent words says a lot about the gloomy chapter of the AI era we’re currently living through.
Into the “uncanny valley”
Merriam-Webster has yet to release the full compendium of its newly recognized terms, but the four tech words it has confirmed paint a fairly stark picture by themselves.
First, the dictionary’s editors have added “compute” in its noun form—meaning, “the computational resources (such as memory and processing power) required for a computer or computer program to function.”
This term has become increasingly common as tech companies race to build enough data center infrastructure to support increasingly complex AI models.
Next are “vibe coding” (using AI to make code) and “AGI” (artificial general intelligence, or the potential capability of computer systems to match or exceed human thinking).
And, lastly, “uncanny valley” is now officially Scrabble-playable.
The phrase, as defined by Merriam-Webster’s team, is “a psychological effect characterized by feelings of unease or revulsion in response to the nearly but imperfectly lifelike quality of something (such as a doll, a robot, an AI-generated image or voice, or a computer-animated character) that is intended to simulate a human.”
Taken together, these four words feel like the perfect encapsulation of the AI fears that have recently taken over the tech world.
Early this month, AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic and issued a lengthy statement on X (notching 173.4 million views and counting), which included the assertion that “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
Multiple other high-profile researchers at Anthropic and OpenAI have publicly supported Coxon’s statement.
Perhaps most tellingly, in the days following Coxon’s resignation, both OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei agreed that AI development needs to slow down in order to avoid a techno-apocalypse.
In the midst of this discourse, as Fast Company wrote at the time, “a lot of unfamiliar words are being tossed around,” including “AGI,” “existential risk,” “paperclip theory,” and “off-switch problem.” (Find definitions of those terms here.)
Right now, AI doomsday fears are at a fever pitch—and they’re permanently changing our collective vocabulary.
