Over 2025 I looked at many words as our word of the week. Some words I chose because they were being used front and centre in current affairs, others indirectly reflected what was happening in the world and others were just chosen on whim. These are my choice of the words of the year 2025 with the field it was chosen from.
VEX
The first word I chose in 2025 was “vex” to celebrate the 250 anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. I associate Austen with only one word and that is “vex”.
From my analysis “vex” appears in its different forms 23 times in Pride and Prejudice: once as “vex”; eight times as “vexed”’; once as “vexing”; 11 times as “vexation”; and twice as “vexatious” making it Austen’s most distinctive term for personal and social irritation.
FAIRY SMUT
I was introduced to “fairy smut” in 2025 although it is not new to this year. It is an affectionate term for “romantasy” (a fantasy romance novel). Here “romantasy” is more bodice-ripping romance than serenading-a-balcony romance. A “bodice ripper” being a disparaging term for a sexually explicit romantic novel or film with a historical setting (some prefer “spicy”).
TARIFF
“Tariff” was the word of the moment in March as US President Trump announced he was imposing tariffs on friends and foe alike—China, Canada, Mexico, the European Union and, of course, Australia. Trump was quoted as saying: “To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff, and it’s my favorite word.”
BONKERS
US researchers analysed American speech in 2025 and found that “bonkers” topped the list of Britishisms now regularly used by Americans. When US headlines have lurched from the absurd to stark raving madness the US public have had to resort to something new, and “bonkers” seems to have filled the need. The word that almost captured the Trump-Vance presidential campaign was “weird” but now it seems to have gone up a notch to “bonkers”.
CONTUMACIOUS
To demonstrate how bonkers US politics has become U.S. District Judge James Boasberg accused the Trump administration of “deliberately and gleefully” violating his order and showing “contumacious behaviour”. Boasberg had issued a ruling on the US government’s lack of compliance with his orders to cease deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act. He is requiring the administration to respond to his decision. However Trump’s disregard for the law seems to have been normalised by the end of 2025.
CANOODLE
During a Coldplay concert in Boston in July, the stadium kiss-cam landed on two executives—Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot—caught in what was described as a canoodle, the clip went viral worldwide. Canoodle is the sort of word we use when we want to imply a little bit of illicitness. Its use in this case has added a hint of absurdity to the exposure of a work affair which left many of the people affected far from amused.
GENOCIDE
What Netanyahu perpetrated in Gaza this year was eventually and reluctantly identified by many world humanitarian organisations and western countries as “genocide”. His deliberate and unequivocal targeting of Palestinian civilians was at first accepted as collateral damage in Israeli targeting Hamas terrorists in response to the 7 October attack but its relentless escalation soon made a lie of that. Netanyahu destroyed housing and infrastructure; targeted schools and hospitals with missiles; restricted access to food (even attacking queues for food); and blockaded routes to safety. He targeted witnesses including journalists and humanitarian aid workers, including Australians, in what portrayed by the IDF (the Israeli military) as a series of “unfortunate accidents”.
EM-DASH—A DEFENCE
The em-dash during 2025 was cast as a sign of AI generated text. It isn’t. It is a mainstream punctuation mark much beloved by many writers including myself. Emily Dickinson was a great user of it claiming it as here own (as in an em[ily]-dash).
Professional writers defend the em dash as expressive punctuation; non-writers mistrust it as suspicious AI-generated punctuation. This pattern holds across the national mix, Australian, American and British—the divide is professional more than cultural. Outside the writing community, people were often discovering the em-dash for the first time from AI generated text. Thus they equated it with AI simply because they hadn’t recognised it or come across it before.
AI SLOP
Every year the world’s major English dictionaries publish their word of the year for 2025 (WOTY25). It can be an interesting window into the political, social and cultural drivers of our world but this year they are all obsessed with AI. The Macquarie, Oxford, Cambridge, Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com lexicographers are almost all looking at artificial intelligence and our online world. The Australian Macquarie Dictionary (AU) has chosen “AI slop”; the Merriam-Webster (US) also has “slop”; and the English dictionaries, the Oxford Dictionary has chosen “rage bait”; Cambridge Dictionary went with “parasocial” and the other English dictionary Collins also embraced the tech industry with “vibe coding”. Dictionary.com went with “67” which was as equally unpalatable to me. I think the dictionaries have fallen for the same AI slop they are describing.
VEX IS MY WOTY
But after all this. After Netanyahu’s “genocide”; after Trumps’s “tariffs’ and “contumacious behaviour”; after the Internet attacks the “em-dash” as a sign of “AI slop”; and “fairy smut” and public “canoodling” we can only look at the “bonkers” world we live in and be completely vexed by it.
So my word of the year 2025 is “vex” which both celebrates Jane Austen and sums up our consternation with the events of the world. Austen has Mr Darcy (the romantic protagonist of P&P) say these words which could have been used for the events of 2025:
The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.