Merriam-Webster Just Added 1,400 New Words. Here's What the AI Ones Actually Mean.

Merriam-Webster added 1,400 new words and definitions to its dictionary this week. Some are pop culture (yacht rock, Rickroll, promposal). Some are food (chili crisp, cake pop, superfood). But a good chunk of the list is AI vocabulary, which tells you something: this language isn't internet slang anymore. It's mainstream enough to earn a dictionary entry, and if your team is using Claude or any other AI tool, you're probably hearing these words in meetings whether you've defined them or not.

TEG is an official member of the Anthropic Claude Partner Network. Part of our job is translating AI terminology into plain English for the teams we work with. See our full Claude services.

The AI words that made the cut

AGI (artificial general intelligence)
Shorthand for an AI system that can perform any intellectual task a human can, not just the narrow, single-purpose tasks most AI tools handle today. It's the long-term goal a lot of AI labs talk about, and it's now different enough from everyday AI to need its own word.

Compute
Not a new word, but a new definition. Compute is now officially a noun: the processing power needed to run AI models. When someone says "we're spending a fortune on compute," this is the entry that backs them up.

Vibe coding
Using AI to write software by describing what you want in plain language instead of writing the code yourself. This one's a big deal for how fast small teams can now build internal tools, and it's exactly the kind of thing we build for clients every week.

Uncanny valley
The uneasy feeling you get when something artificial — an AI voice, an AI image, an AI avatar — looks or sounds almost human, but not quite. Worth knowing if your team is evaluating AI-generated content or customer-facing tools.

Parasocial
Describing a one-sided relationship, the kind a person forms with a public figure, influencer, or (increasingly) an AI chatbot they talk to regularly. This word predates the current AI wave, but its new prominence tracks with how many people now have daily conversations with an AI assistant.

Slop
Merriam-Webster's 2025 Word of the Year, and it set up this year's AI additions. Defined as low-quality digital content produced in bulk by AI. It's the word for what happens when AI is used carelessly, and it's the opposite of what a well-built implementation should produce.

Why this matters beyond the trivia

New dictionary entries aren't just fun facts. They're a signal of how fast AI vocabulary is moving from "technical jargon" to "something your CFO says in a budget meeting." If your team is still nodding along when someone mentions compute costs or vibe coding without being totally sure what's meant, you're not behind. The language moved fast this year.

That's exactly the gap we close. Whether it's explaining what these terms mean for your business, or actually building the AI workflows behind them — the kind that produce real output instead of slop — we'd love to walk through it with you.