Records in Z
Letter by letter, 60 at a time
- ZAO n. ☠ Dead 2019–2019 A Chinese app that put the user's face into famous film and television scenes from a single selfie, and went to the top of the App Store there within… 3
- Zelensky Surrender Deepfake n. ☠ Dead 2022–2022 A poor-quality deepfake of Volodymyr Zelensky, head oddly still on a moving body, telling Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their arms, planted on a hac… 3
- Zenless Zone Zero n. ● Alive 2024– HoYoverse's urban action gacha of July 2024, set in a city called New Eridu with a bunny mascot and a video-shop front, which arrived with the moment… 3
- Zerebro n. ◐ Dying 2024– An AI agent on Solana that posted, made music and had a token, launched in November 2024. In May 2025 its co-founder appeared to shoot himself on a l… 2
- Zerg Rush n. ▲ Fossil 1998–2012 Overwhelming an opponent with many cheap units, early. A tactic, then a metaphor, then a Google search trick, which is where words go to be embalmed. 0
- Zesty adj. ● Alive 2022– Flamboyant, camp, a bit much — 'zesty' — as the 2022–24 word among teenagers for a man who seemed gay or just expressive, used as a tease and, someti… 2
- Zibra Zubra Zibralini n. ● Alive 2025– A zebra with a zip down its middle, stripes unzipping in the narration to reveal nothing anyone could agree on. A late-cast character notable for its… 2
- Ziff Davis v OpenAI n. ● Alive 2025– The suit by Ziff Davis, publisher of IGN, PCMag, Mashable and CNET, alleging OpenAI copied its articles, ignored its robots.txt instructions and stri… 3
- Zillennial n. ● Alive 2020– The micro-generation born around 1993–98 — too young for the millennial pause, too old for the Gen Z shake — who remember dial-up and had a smartphon… 2
- Zlatan Quotes n. ◐ Dying 2011– The third-person aphorisms of Zlatan Ibrahimović — 'I don't do auditions', 'I came like a king, left like a legend', 'a World Cup without me isn't wo… 3
- Zombieing n. ● Alive 2023– A ghost who comes back — the person who disappeared for months and then texts 'hey stranger' as if nothing happened. Named in 2023 and, the record no… 2
- Zombo.com n. ● Alive 1999– A site where you can do anything, at Zombo.com, said aloud forever. Rebuilt in HTML5 when Flash died, which makes it the only promise from 1999 still… 1
- Zone 2 n. ● Alive 2023– Exercising at a heart rate where you can still talk — the easy jog — reframed by longevity podcasts in 2023 as the most important thing a person can … 3
- Zoom Background n. ◐ Dying 2020– The virtual background — a beach, a spaceship, the Simpsons' living room — that replaced everyone's actual room in April 2020, and the genre of joke … 2
- Zoom Cat Lawyer n. ☠ Dead 2021–2021 A lawyer in a court hearing on Zoom with a cat filter he could not remove — 'I'm here live, I'm not a cat' — which was the pandemic's most-shared thi… 2
- Zoom Fatigue n. ◐ Dying 2020– Exhaustion from watching your own face while other people talk. Named within weeks of everyone getting it, and still with us in the way a chronic con… 0
- Zoom Terms Panic n. ☠ Dead 2023–2023 The weekend in August 2023 when readers noticed that Zoom's terms of service, updated in March, gave the company the right to use customer content fo… 3
- Zoomer n. ● Alive 2018– A member of Generation Z, in the wojak family: a haircut, a Fortnite reference, a vape, a phone. From a 4chan drawing in 2018 to a general word for a… 3
- Zora Coins n. ● Alive 2025– The app that made 'every post a coin' literal: from April 2025 anything published on Zora was issued as a token on Base, with the poster taking a sha… 4
- Zuckerberg Spectre Deepfake n. ☠ Dead 2019–2019 A short deepfake of Mark Zuckerberg sitting at a desk and boasting about controlling 'billions of people's stolen data', posted to Instagram in June … 3
- Zuckerberg's Open-Weights Turn n. ● Alive 2023– Meta's decision, from July 2023, to release its Llama models with downloadable weights and a licence allowing commercial use, and Mark Zuckerberg's J… 3
- Zune n. ☠ Dead 2006–2011 Microsoft's iPod, launched in November 2006 in brown, with a Wi-Fi song-sharing feature that let a track play three times before it expired and a slo… 3