One of the most established truths about language is that it’s constantly evolving. Every year, our vocabulary sheds and accumulates words; slang explodes onto the scene while other terms take a step back; and grammatical conventions increasingly accommodate colloquial speech and new idioms. There are, of course, several ways to keep up with this ever-changing landscape, and Dictionary.com is one of them. It certainly helps that, last month, the digital dictionary released its largest word drop yet.
Gathered throughout the first half of 2025, Dictionary.com’s 1,235 new entries highlight how many new words the English language has absorbed. Notably, the latest update reveals that global cultures continue to shape our language, most recently with strong influences from Japanese, French, and Spanish. Okonomiyaki, for instance, has entered our lexicon, in reference to savory Japanese pancakes made with cabbage and other ingredients like noodles, meat, and seafood. Maneki-neko is another newcomer, referring to the good luck statuette of a cat with one raised paw.
Unsurprisingly, fresh trends and slang have also impacted our language this year. Despite being familiar to many of us already, kiss cam has now officially been registered (one especially viral moment at a Coldplay concert may have helped its case for inclusion). Coffee badging signifies a tension between return-to-office mandates and employees who prefer remote work. The term describes those who visit the office just long enough to have coffee or fulfill attendance expectations before returning home to finish the workday.
Beyond this, intensifying prefixes have ballooned in their frequency as well, with Dictionary.com flagging superintelligence, ultrawide, and superyacht as examples. It should come as no surprise that technology and science-related terms have seen an equal amount of growth, given how rapidly both fields have been developing. Geolocate is one such word, whose inclusion could be credited to the popularity of Find My, GeoGuessr, and other location-based services and games.
“This word drop reflects how English continues to evolve and be shaped through cultural exchange, technological innovations, and viral trends,” Dictionary.com wrote in a statement. “The addition of 1,235 new entries is no small feat, but we’re not slowing down.”
Check out the full drop report on Dictionary.com.
Dictionary.com recently released its largest word drop yet, complete with nearly 1,300 new entries.
For the first half of 2025, Dictionary.com noted that global cultures continued to shape our language, most recently with strong influences from Japanese, French, and Spanish.
One new entry was “kiss cam,” whose inclusion may be thanks to a viral moment at a recent Coldplay concert.
All images via Dictionary.com.
Source: Supersized Summer Word Drop 2025
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