Words of the year (so far)
Four months in, what does the lexi-scape look like?
The good news: Instead of one word of the week you’re getting a whole bunch. The bad news: I’ve probably omitted some of your own candidates. Feel free to leave a comment and set me right.
Political (U.S.)
DOGE (verb). The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which isn’t actually a federal department and has not contributed to measurable efficiency, was established by executive order on January 20, 2025, the first day of Trump 2.0. It has proved its linguistic productivity as a combining form (DOGEboys, DOGEbags) and is now being employed as a verb meaning “to purge,” “to fire,” or even, as David Gardner wrote in a March 23 column for The Daily Beast (“You’ve Been Doged!”), “[to pry] into someone else’s business uninvited.” Amy West pointed out “doging” in a May 1 post to the American Dialect Society’s listserv that cited this comic strip:
Chris Waigl, a geophysicist in Alaska, replied that “‘(person) got DOGEd’ or ‘(program) got DOGEd’ or any planned activity really, such as for example weather balloon launches or conference attendance getting or having been DOGEd is common parlance” in her academic area.
PINO (PEE-no). President in Name Only. Formed in imitation of RINO (Republican in Name Only).
was among the first to use the acronym — in October 2024 — in reference to the current Trump term, but the Wordbirds Tumblr introduced it seven years earlier, during Trump 1.0 (“A pejorative term for an unqualified, ineffectual and/or illegitimately elected president”). The New York Post used it in December 2024 in reference to President Biden, adding that it was “short for Pinocchio, appropriately enough.”Political (Canada)
Elbows up. “[H]ockey analogies and imagery continue to dominate the conversation around Canada-U.S. relations. This time the focus is on Gordie Howe (or ‘Mr. Hockey’ as he was widely known), whose strategic use of elbows on the ice has become a political rallying cry for Canadians. … In particular, Howe’s practice of keeping his ‘elbows up’ in the corners to ward off belligerents on the opposing team has become a focal point for Canadians’ actions against Trump’s aggression.” — The Conversation, March 16, 2025
Science
De-extinction. “The process of generating an organism that either resembles or is an extinct organism.” In April, the Dallas-based biotech firm Colossal claimed to have resurrected the dire wolf, Aenocyon dirus, using ancient DNA, cloning and gene-editing technology. Not so fast, cautioned Vox’s Marina Bolotnikova: “The wolf pups are not dire wolves, and they haven’t been ‘de-extincted’.” The first usage of “de-extinction” seems to have been in The Source of Magic, a fantasy novel by Piers Anthony published in 1979. It gained currency after a 2013 TEDxDeExtinction event.
Measles. It’s back in record numbers in the U.S. — de-extincted, you might even say, although it had been only nearly wiped out, thanks to highly effective vaccines that our current secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has deemed inferior to “treatments.” In recent weeks he has recommended Vitamin A as a measles “treatment”; unfortunately, Vitamin A is toxic at high doses. Measles comes from Middle English masel, “little spot,” but its effects are far from measly: It can lead to blindness, encephalitis, and even death.
Miasma. “RFK Jr. doesn’t believe in the germ theory,” writes pediatrician Paul Offit. “He believes in something called the miasma theory” — an ancient, abandoned theory that holds that “diseases are caused by poisonous vapors (i.e., miasmata) that are generated by rotting organic matter, such as trash sitting out on the street.” Miasma comes from a Greek source, miainein, “to pollute.”
Tech
Glazegate. Glaze is a relatively new slang verb meaning “to praise excessively.” (Hat tip:
, April 12, 2025.) It turns out you don’t have to be human to have excessive-praise issues: Last week OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT, admitted that “the chatbot’s default character had become uncomfortably obsequious.” (John Herrman, New York magazine, “ChatGPT Wasn’t Supposed to Kiss Your Ass This Hard,” May 1, 2025.) One example: “A recent system update made the chatbot so sycophantic that, if a user told it he’d stopped taking his medications and abandoned his family because they were broadcasting suspicious radio signals, ChatGPT would respond with fawning praise for the person’s journey of courageously pursuing his truth.” Perhaps inevitably, the sicko-fancy has attracted the -gate suffix. (Alliteration helps!)Epithets
Eyeliner Man. Does Vice President JD Vance actually wear eyeliner, or was he born that way? The question is a settled one for Chinese critics of the Trump Administration’s mercurial tariff tactics: After Vance made a disparaging comment about “Chinese peasants,” posts and videos began mocking the VP as “Eyeliner Man.” One video shows a character saying, “Vice President Vance, I’m a Chinese peasant. Do you realize your tariff policy will lead to the soaring price of your eyeliner?” At least it’s more family-friendly than “couch-fucker.”
Panican. “From panic + -an (possibly influenced by American or Republican). Coined in 2025 by U.S. president Donald Trump, in reference to people panicking about the stock market's response to his trade tariffs. Popularised by Donald Trump's supporters.” (Wiktionary)
Work/life
Coffee-badging. “The practice of employees clocking in for a brief period at the office, typically long enough to grab a coffee, before departing to work from elsewhere.” (Via
, April 12.) “While coffee badging has been in vogue since return-to-office mandates began a few years ago, it’s spreading as the share of companies announcing such policies has grown,” according to HR experts.Outie/Innie. Terms borrowed from the Apple TV+ series Severance, whose second season aired from January to March 2025. The show’s fictional Lumon Industries administers a Severance Procedure that bifurcates an employee’s consciousness into Innie (work life) and Outie (personal life) (source: Severance Wiki). The terms have been adopted as memes by normies in the real world as colloquial alternatives to, say, “ego” and “superego.” See, for example, “An Open Letter to Lumon Industries Requesting to Please Kindly Insert the Severance Device in My Brain and Keep It on Innie Mode for the Next Four Years” (McSweeney’s, February 28, 2025). For a more serious take, watch
(“Etymology Nerd”) deliver a video explainer.Probie. Short for “probationary,” the federal-government-employee status targeted in the first round of DOGE-led layoffs. A probationary employee is not necessarily a new hire; the person could be a longtime employee recently promoted or transferred to a new position. See this Reddit megathread of 2025 Valentine’s Day probationary purges: “NPS probie, just got the email. Celebrating my first Valentine’s Day married crying and looking for jobs”; “FAA Probie. 4 years in government service, 8 months with FAA. Got the call after hours at the Gym. Shitcanned. Thanks Sec Duffy, coward.”
Pronatalism. The “have more babies or civilization dies” ideology, sometimes expressed as “have more white babies or western civilization dies.” From NPR’s “Fresh Air,” April 30, 2025:
Pronatalism has been in the news lately, with Trump policies underway to increase birth rates by giving away a $5,000 baby bonus for parents and a national medal of motherhood for moms who have six or more children. Pronatalists warn of an apocalyptic future - that if birth rates in the U.S. keep falling, we might be headed towards economic collapse, even extinction.
Three-word memes
Trump take egg. “A meme as versatile as the egg itself” is how
put it in a March 26 post. Tim Marcin was more egg-spansive in a March 5 article for Mashable:First and foremost, "Trump take egg" is funny to write, say, and read. It just is. The internet loves absurdism and the phrase is certainly absurd — it's purposefully awkward to read and nonsensical.
Second, it's an obvious jab at the Trump voters who cast their votes in the name of inflation. Sure, egg prices are high because of the bird flu and price gouging, but it's an obvious way for liberals to prod folks who voted because they were upset about inflation and blindly believed Trump would fix it.
Phrasing this commentary as “Trump take egg” is, in a way, mocking that simplistic way of voting. Oh, you voted for “Trump fix egg?” Well, guess what? “Trump take egg.”
See also: eggflation, eggpocalypse, and “Easter eggs are so expensive, people are dyeing potatoes.”
Wow! Everything’s computer! Non-motorist, non-techie Donald J. Trump’s awestruck utterance upon entering a perfectly basic Tesla sedan in March 2025.
Economy
Doom-spending. We learned about doomscrolling during the early Covid era and about doom loop in 2023, when San Francisco’s declining retail economy was giving shoppers and analysts alike the blues. Now the threat of punitive tariffs on imported goods has turned many Americans into doom-spenders motivated by fear of future price hikes. According to a February 2025 report from CreditCards.com, as many as 1 in 5 Americans are doom-spending.
Superbillionaire. A billion dollars is almost too much wealth to comprehend, but not too much for some masters of the universe, for whom the term superbillionaire has been coined. “[Elon] Musk is one of just 24 people worldwide who qualify for that distinction, which is defined as individuals worth $50 billion or more,” the Wall Street Journal reported in February. “Of those 24 people, 16 qualified as centi-billionaires, meaning they have a net worth of at least $100 billion.” (Hat tip:
, February 26, 2025.)Things fall apart
Embrittlement. In March Tesla recalled 46,096 Cybertrucks “to fix a fault that was causing the steel trim on some vehicles to come loose or fly off while driving.” The trim had been attached with an adhesive found to be “susceptible to environmental embrittlement.” Embrittle — to make or become brittle; to lose ductility — has been around since 1902, but this latest Cybertruck fiasco has embiggened its profile. See also: Enshittification.
Covered earlier: Stinge-watching, spoils, tariff, pickle, groceries, warfighter, sovereign(ty), dismantle, downtown, sickspan, aesthetic(s), forestalgia, lore, dingus, and rawdog (the American Dialect Society’s word of the year for 2024). See also “New words for the new regime,” my February 13 roundup.
My question about DOGE is, how do you pronounce it? I've heard it usually pronounced with a soft G, like "DOJE" or "DOZJE." That works with "DOGEbag" and others. But "Government" has a hard G sound. And if you're going to speak or pronounce an acronym as a word, I think it should be faithful to the original word initial sounds.
"GIF" should be pronounced with a hard G, because it doesn't stand for "Jraphic Interchange Format." I realize that there are some that pronounce it "JIF." And that there are undoubtedly many common acronym pronunciations that would go against my jrain.
I want to leave a pithy comment, but I'm stunned by the array of lively words presented.
Not that I'm going to get all pithy about it.