If you think 2025 couldn't get worse, Collins Dictionary awards 'vibe coding' the word of the year

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And I'm here to say 'Um, actually'.

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If you've never heard of vibe coding, it's the act of using generative AI and neutral language to code without actually writing a single line of code yourself. That's just the kind of world we live in now. As an acknowledgement of this change, Collins Dictionary has awarded the term Word of the Year, despite, well, being two words.

This week, Collins Dictionary posted a blog celebrating and explaining its choice for the Word of the Year (via The Register). Vibe coding is relatively contentious in itself. Generative AI has been widely criticised for flagrantly ignoring copyright and for its adoption by investors declaring it's the next big thing in games, movies, or whatever art form you hold dear. And that's because there are productivity gains to be made in skipping through all the manual work of creative labour.

That is to say, vibe coding is pretty contentious. The blog post from Collins Dictionary explains, "While tech experts debate whether it’s revolutionary or reckless, the term has resonated far beyond Silicon Valley, speaking to a broader cultural shift towards AI-assisted everything in everyday life."

But, of course, like Time's person of the year, Collins Dictionary's Word of the Year is not necessarily intended to be an endorsement of the word: just a reflection of the culture (look up who Time awarded man of the year in 1938 for arguably the biggest demonstration of this 'importance does not equate to good' principle).

Vibe coding winning Word of the Year is a demonstration of divide, of the changes that generative AI has wrought. Collins Dictionary says that words like vibe coding represent a pro-AI approach, where taskmasking and clanker (a joke slur for robots) represent an anti-AI sentiment. The blog argues words like glazing call out fakeness, while aura farming encourages it.

"In 2025, it’s more apparent than ever that people contain multitudes, and this year’s Word of the Year list encapsulates what it means to be human in the age of AI," the blog post concludes. If you've gotta give a rational for using the word 'vibe coding', that's a pretty good one.

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James Bentley
James Bentley
Hardware writer

James is a more recent PC gaming convert, often admiring graphics cards, cases, and motherboards from afar. It was not until 2019, after just finishing a degree in law and media, that they decided to throw out the last few years of education, build their PC, and start writing about gaming instead. In that time, he has covered the latest doodads, contraptions, and gismos, and loved every second of it. Hey, it’s better than writing case briefs.

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