Platforms & apps

● Aliven.✎ 3

Millennial Cringe

The catalogue of things a generation did that the next found embarrassing: 'adulting', Harry Potter houses, 'doggo', the pause, the skinny jeans. Named in 2023 and, the record notes, mostly a list of things that were once this dictionary's headwords.

▸ 2023peak 2023still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

My AI

Snapchat's chatbot, pinned to the top of everyone's chats in April 2023 whether they wanted it or not, which became a meme for the teenagers who bullied it, the parents who feared it, and the one-star reviews that asked for it to be removed. The record's entry for an AI as an unwanted guest.

▸ 2023peak 2023still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Netflix Password Crackdown

The month Netflix started charging for the password your ex still used, and the internet's response: memes about the 'household', the extra member fee, and the 2017 tweet in which the company had said 'love is sharing a password'. The record's entry for a tweet as a receipt.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Power Slap

Slap fighting as a televised league — two people, a table, one slap each, no defence allowed — launched in 2023 to the internet's horror and fascination in roughly equal amounts. The record's entry for a sport whose entire highlight reel is the same clip.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Reddit Blackout

Thousands of subreddits going private in June 2023 to protest the pricing that killed third-party apps, which produced two days of a broken website, a chief executive's leaked memo, and the John Oliver posting rule. The record's entry for a strike by volunteers.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

● Aliven.✎ 2

Savannah Bananas

A baseball team that plays a version of the game with dancing, time limits, a batter on stilts and rules designed for TikTok, which sold out stadiums that the real sport could not fill. The record's entry for a sport reverse-engineered from a feed.

▸ 2023peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Skeet (Bluesky)

A post on Bluesky, named by users as a 'skeet' — sky tweet — against the explicit wishes of the platform's chief executive, who lost. The record's entry for the noun that the users chose and the company could not stop, which is how the internet names things.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Temu

A shopping app that spent enough on adverts to be inescapable in 2023–24, sold things for prices that seemed like typos, and became a meme for the phrase 'shop like a billionaire' and the quality of what arrived. The record's entry for a shop as a spam folder.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Therapy Speak

The clinical vocabulary of therapy — boundaries, holding space, trauma, triggered — used by people who had learned it from the internet, in situations that did not need it: a text about brunch. Named in 2023 as a problem. The record's entry for the dialect of the well-adjusted.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Threads

Instagram's text app, launched in July 2023 to a hundred million sign-ups in five days and a collective shrug by the end of the month. The record's entry for the fastest-growing product ever, and the fastest to become a place people forgot they had.

▸ 2023peak 2023still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

TikTok Shop

The moment the app started selling things in the feed — the orange cart, the live shopping streams, the influencer holding a product with a specific urgency — and the internet's discovery that every video was now potentially an advert. The record's entry for the feed becoming a shop.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Unity Runtime Fee

A game engine announced it would charge developers per install, retroactively, and the entire industry responded within hours with a wave of memes, threats and a reversal. The record's entry for the fastest corporate climbdown in gaming, and for 'per install' as a curse.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

● Aliven.✎ 2

Wembanyama

A French basketball player so tall and so unlike anything before him that the internet decided he was an alien, a glitch, and a Pokémon within a week of his draft. 'Wemby' became a byword for something that should not be possible. The record's entry for a body as a meme.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

X Premium

The subscription that Twitter Blue became when Twitter became X in July 2023, sold in Basic, Premium and Premium+ tiers, granting a checkmark, longer posts, fewer ads and a cut of ad revenue for replies with enough engagement. The record notes the revenue share is why every viral post now has forty replies saying 'this' from accounts with checkmarks, and files the term as the price of being seen.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

X Rebrand

The week the bird was replaced with a letter, the sign was taken off the building with a crane, and the whole internet refused to stop saying 'tweet'. The record's entry for a rename that the users vetoed and the company enforced, and for the crane.

▸ 2023peak 2023still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Xeet

A post on X, formerly a tweet — 'xeet', pronounced by nobody in agreement — as the word that was proposed, mocked, and never adopted after Twitter changed its name. The record's entry for the noun that did not take, and for 'tweet', which everyone still says.

▸ 2023peak 2023still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

YouTube Adblock War

The autumn of 2023 when YouTube started blocking the blockers — three videos and you're out — and the internet responded with workarounds, memes, and a lot of people discovering how many adverts there were. The record's entry for an arms race as a season.

▸ 2023peak 2023still up

☠ Deadn.

AI Hands

Seven fingers, fused knuckles, the tell. Fixed in the models within eighteen months, which retired both the joke and the only easy way to check.

▸ 2022peak 2023†2024

● Aliven.✎ 2

Babygirl (Men)

A grown man — usually a middle-aged actor or a murderous fictional character — called 'babygirl' by the internet with total sincerity, as the 2022–23 way of finding a man both attractive and pathetic. The record's entry for the pet name that crossed every line and became a category.

▸ 2022peak 2023still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Coastal Grandmother

Linen, a straw hat, a white kitchen, a glass of wine at four, and the life of a Nancy Meyers film's heroine — the 2022 aesthetic of being sixty and rich by the sea, adopted by people who were twenty-four and inland. The record's entry for the grandmother as a mood board.

▸ 2022peak 2022†2022

● Aliven.✎ 3

Community Notes

Crowd-written corrections that appear under a post, which became a meme in their own right: the note that ratios the post, the note on the owner's post, the 'readers added context' as a phrase. The record's entry for fact-checking as a punchline.

▸ 2022peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Corn Emoji

🌽 — 'porn', for a platform that would not let you say it, which then became a joke in itself when a child's video about actual corn went viral in 2022. The record's entry for the emoji that had two meanings in the same summer.

▸ 2022peak 2023still up

☠ Deadn.

Corn Kid

A seven-year-old explaining that corn has the juice. Green Giant made him a spokesperson within weeks, which is what happens to sincerity now.

▸ 2022peak 2022†2022

● Aliven.✎ 2

Dynamic Island

Apple's name for the pill-shaped cut-out at the top of the iPhone 14 Pro's screen, announced in September 2022, which animates to show timers, calls and music so that the hole in your display looks like a decision. The record notes the name was mocked for a week, then used unironically, and that this is the standard Apple naming cycle.

▸ 2022peak 2022still up

● Aliven.✎ 1

Enshittification

The three-act decay of a platform: good to users, then good to business customers, then good only to itself. A theory of death this dictionary uses constantly.

▸ 2022peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Feral Girl Summer

The rejection of the clean girl: no routine, no skincare, out until four, a kebab. Summer 2022's aesthetic for people who found 'that girl' exhausting, and the ancestor of the rat girl and the goblin. The record's entry for the summer of not trying.

▸ 2022peak 2022†2022

● Aliven.✎ 3

Gaslighting (Discourse)

The therapy term's escape into everyday use — 'gaslighting' for any disagreement, any lie, any time someone was wrong — which peaked in 2022 when a dictionary made it word of the year and the internet made it a joke: 'gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss'. The record's entry for the diagnosis as an accusation.

▸ 2022peak 2022still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Goblin Mode

Deliberate, unapologetic squalor. Died the moment a dictionary press release certified it, which this dictionary notes with some discomfort.

▸ 2022peak 2022†2023

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Golden Retriever Boyfriend

The happy, loyal, uncomplicated man — enthusiastic, a bit dim, good with your friends — as a relationship type, popular in 2022–23 and killed in May 2024 by the hot rodent boyfriend, who was none of those things. The record's entry for a dog as a dating category.

▸ 2022peak 2023†2024

☠ Deadphr.

It's Morbin' Time

Pretending a failed vampire film was a masterpiece until the studio believed it. Sony re-released it to 1,000 cinemas in June 2022, made $85,000, and the joke died of victory.

▸ 2022peak 2022†2022

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Le Dollar Bean

The text-to-speech voice reading a censored spelling of 'lesbian' as 'le dollar bean', which became the word itself for a year — a euphemism generated by a machine's mistake. The record's entry for algospeak that the algorithm wrote.

▸ 2022peak 2022†2023

● Alivephr.✎ 3

Let Him Cook

An instruction to let someone finish, because they are on to something. Also used sarcastically for someone who is not, which doubled its lifespan.

▸ 2022peak 2023still up

☠ Deadn.

Little Miss

Mr. Men characters captioned with a personal failing. Two weeks of everyone's flaws in a friendly font, then the format, having said everything about everyone, stopped.

▸ 2022peak 2022†2022

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Loab

A woman who kept appearing in negatively prompted images, treated as a haunting. The first creepypasta about a latent space, and dead the moment it was explained as one.

▸ 2022peak 2022†2023

● Aliven.✎ 3

Millennial Pause

The half-second a millennial waits after pressing record before speaking — a habit from an era when cameras were slow — identified by Gen Z in 2022 as a generational tell. The record's entry for the pause that dates a person.

▸ 2022peak 2023still up

◐ Dyingn.

Mother

A woman one admires enough to adopt. Used about pop stars, politicians and a woman on a bus, and increasingly with an audible wince.

▸ 2022peak 2023still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Nepo Baby

The child of famous parents with a career of their own, named as a category by a magazine cover in December 2022 and argued about for a year by the children, who mostly did not enjoy it. The record's entry for the surname as a discourse.

▸ 2022peak 2023still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

PDF File

Algospeak for a paedophile — a 'PDF file' — used in true-crime and warning content to evade moderation, and the reason a document format became an accusation. The record's entry for the euphemism that made office software sound sinister.

▸ 2022peak 2023still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Sad Beige Mom

A parody of the minimalist parenting aesthetic — beige toys, beige clothes, a beige nursery — narrated by a comedian in the voice of a Werner Herzog documentary. The record's entry for the colour as a critique, and the reason 'beige' became an insult in 2022.

▸ 2022peak 2023still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Spicy Accountant

A euphemism for adult-content creators — from a sound in which a man explains that when people ask what he does he says 'accountant' — which became the 2022 word for the job, on a platform that would not allow the real one. The record's entry for the profession as a code.

▸ 2022peak 2022still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Ticketmaster Meltdown

The day a ticketing site collapsed under a pop star's fans, with queues of thousands, error messages and a Senate hearing in which senators quoted lyrics. The record's entry for the queue as a meme and the reason 'Ticketmaster' is a verb for failure.

▸ 2022peak 2022†2023

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Twee Revival

Peter Pan collars, ukuleles, cardigans and the Zooey Deschanel of 2011, declared back in January 2022 by TikTok and argued about for a month by people who had lived through it the first time. The record's entry for the ten-year cycle arriving early and leaving fast.

▸ 2022peak 2022†2022

● Aliven.✎ 3

Vibe Shift

The moment a culture's mood changes and the old things become embarrassing — named in a 2022 magazine piece about a trend forecaster's newsletter — and used since for every change in taste, from jeans to politics. The record's entry for the phrase that made 'vibes' a unit of history.

▸ 2022peak 2022still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

iPad Kid

A child who has had a tablet since before they could walk, with the sticky screen, the glazed look and the tantrum when it is taken — as a type named in 2022 by people who were, in many cases, raising one. The record's entry for the tablet as a parenting verdict.

▸ 2022peak 2023still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Adult Swim Bumps

Videos in the style of a television network's between-show bumpers — a quiet scene, the [as] logo appearing somewhere unexpected — which became a TikTok genre in May 2021 with a specific song and a lot of very good editing. The record's entry for a channel's branding as a fan format.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2021

● Alivev.✎ 2

Ate

Performed superbly, with no crumbs left. Sometimes extended to 'ate and left no crumbs', which is the same thing said by someone who has not.

▸ 2021peak 2023still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Bean Dad

A musician recounting how he made his nine-year-old work out a tin opener for six hours. The first main character of 2021, on 2 January; the account was deleted by the 3rd.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2021

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Berries and Cream

'Berries and cream, berries and cream, I'm a little lad who loves berries and cream' — a 2007 sweet advert with a man in a bob wig, revived on TikTok in September 2021 as a sound, a dance and a nightmare. The record's entry for the advert that waited fourteen years.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2021