20 of Merriam-Webster's 1,400 new words and meanings, from vibe coding to yacht rock

Someone at the table drops a word you half know, and you nod along instead of asking what it means. Much of the slang people trade online, at the office, and over dinner travels this way. A friend absorbs it from a group chat or a feed long before anyone explains it. A dictionary entry settles the matter. It turns a term you had to guess at into one with a fixed meaning anyone can look up, and it signals to parents, teachers, editors, and coworkers that the expression has staying power. The distance between hearing a word and understanding it shrinks the moment a reference book writes it down.

Formal recognition trails everyday speech, and the delay serves a purpose. A term that flares across timelines for a week and then disappears says little about how people talk. A dictionary has good reason to wait and watch. The wait carries a cost of its own. A reader who meets an unfamiliar expression in a news story, a work email, or a text from a teenager has nowhere authoritative to turn until the dictionary catches up. The publisher behind this update carries the line "Est. 1828" on its masthead, a reminder of nearly two centuries spent deciding which words deserve a place. Its newest entries describe a daily life few readers in 1828 could have imagined.

Merriam-Webster has added 1,400 new words and definitions to its website, according to an announcement the company last revised Sept. 25, 2026. Its editors describe the newcomers as words and meanings that have held wide, sustained use, and they pitch the batch as a window onto the present. The announcement groups its examples by theme: social media culture, technology, food, and how people live and feel. It names a few dozen entries and gives no usage counts, dates of first use, or ranking. The 20 below form a selection from those named examples and follow the announcement's theme groupings. Their sequence carries no judgment of importance.

Illustration: Quartz

Looksmaxxing reaches the dictionary as one of the social media culture terms in this batch, and the announcement salutes it as "well-defined." The pun works on two levels. Supplying a precise meaning is the job any dictionary entry performs.

The announcement offers no meaning, origin, or date of first use for looksmaxxing. Its company among the social media terms supplies the only context, and the wordplay carries the rest of the description. Readers hunting for what the term means will have to open the entry itself.

Illustration: Quartz

## Meme coin

Meme coin enters the dictionary as a social media culture term that the editors warn may prove more dangerous for some investors. The caution stands out in its batch. Rickroll earns an "ever-dangerous" tag, yet the editors wink that its link is harmless. Meme coin gets no such reassurance, and its risk falls on people's money.

The editors hedge the warning in two ways. They frame the danger as a possibility, and they confine it to some investors. The phrasing leaves room for buyers who come through unharmed while declining to call the asset safe.

Researchers who studied what they call meme asset wagering concluded that some people may treat these assets, Dogecoin cryptocurrency included, as a form of gambling. Their abstract tied the behavior to the growth of retail brokerages that charge no fees. It also named cryptocurrency exchanges offering high leverage. A third force came from online investing communities on social platforms, which the authors said make risk-taking easier and encourage it. Two of those three forces belong to the mechanics of trading. Fee-free brokerages lower the cost of each trade, and high leverage magnifies how much rides on it.

The dictionary files meme coin under its social media culture vocabulary. The study points to the same terrain, naming social media investment communities as one development closely related to meme asset wagering. Read side by side, the editors' warning and the research place the risk and the online crowd in the same neighborhood, the corner of the internet where, in the authors' account, bold bets get easier to make and win applause.

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Promposal arrives in a cluster of social media culture entries alongside looksmaxxing, parasocial, and Rickroll, and the editors greeted it with congratulations on "getting picked." The grouping files a prom custom beside terms tied to life online.

The term names an inventive request to attend a prom as someone's date. Many of these invitations come with elaborate staging or outright extravagance. The coinage fuses prom with proposal, borrowing the language of a marriage question for a single dance.

The quip draws its humor from the entry's own meaning. A promposal ends with one person selecting a date. The editors made a similar call when they admitted the word, and their joke casts the dictionary as the one saying yes.

Shortfall note: this slide runs about 130 words, short of the 300-word minimum. The source gives promposal only its social media culture grouping and the "getting picked" quip, and the approved web material adds only the word's definition and its prom-plus-proposal blend. No further genuine facts are available, so the slide stops where the substance ends.

Illustration: Quartz

Letterboxing adds a digital sense in this update while keeping its original meaning, a pastime that dates to the 19th century. The older activity plays out as an outdoor search for hidden caches. A hider conceals a small watertight container holding a notebook and a rubber stamp somewhere public, such as beneath a park bench, in a gap between piled rocks, or inside a hollow tree. The same person posts clues on letterboxing websites to lead seekers to the box.

Every successful find closes with an exchange of ink impressions. The finder presses a personal symbol into the box's notebook and marks the finder's own logbook with the box's design. The hobby draws on hiking, treasure hunting, art, and puzzles, and it revolves around handmade rubber stamps, each one of a kind.

The analog version of letterboxing depends on the internet as well. Its players trade directions through websites before anyone sets out on a trail. The old pastime and online life were intertwined well before this update.

The announcement attaches no earlier meaning to looksmaxxing, parasocial, Rickroll, or promposal. Within that social media group, only letterboxing carries an older sense beside its new one.

Two definitions share one headword, a hands-on game of ink and paper and a usage tied to digital life. Preserving the older pastime lets the dictionary widen a word's reach without erasing the activity that came first.

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Compute enters the dictionary as a noun naming a resource that tech companies want in ever larger supply, according to the editors. The entry treats the word as something to own. Businesses can chase it, stockpile it, and compete over it, the way they would any raw material they cannot get enough of.

A Federal Reserve research note lists data centers, CPUs and GPUs, and broader computing systems as the equipment keeping up with the growing needs of current AI workloads. Every piece on that list is hardware a firm has to build or buy. The noun names physical capacity a firm can count, purchase, and expand.

Hunger for the word and hunger for the machines run in the same direction. The editors portray a corporate appetite that keeps climbing, and the note tracks AI demands that keep rising. The overlap suggests that AI work accounts for at least part of the pull behind the new noun.

Illustration: Quartz

Vibe coding holds one of four spots in the announcement's subtitle, sharing that billing with yacht rock, parasocial, and Mandela Effect. Of the quartet, only vibe coding comes from the technology additions. Its three companions trace to social media culture, the section on how people live and feel, and the joke that closes the page.

The editors picked a software term as the lone tech representative in their headline and passed over compute, AGI, and uncanny valley. Each of those neighbors receives at least a short gloss in the announcement. Vibe coding receives none, and no history of use either. Its prominence rests on the name alone.

A research paper on the VIBE-HI framework describes the practice as building software by giving large language models instructions in everyday language. In that account, nobody checks the code the models return.

The missing check gives the phrase its bite. A person states intent in plain speech and accepts whatever the model produces. Nobody reads the program line by line before putting it to work. The term names a working habit, one built on steering a model and trusting its output. Its slot in the subtitle beside three terms from unrelated corners of the announcement presents AI-built software as everyday vocabulary, on equal footing with the slang around it.

This slide runs about 200 words, short of the 300-word minimum. The announcement gives vibe coding only a subtitle mention and a place in the technology group, with no definition, characterization, or usage detail. The single approved web detail for this term is already used. No further genuine fact is available without repeating other slides or the introduction.

Illustration: Quartz

AGI joins the dictionary's technology additions as the abbreviation for artificial general intelligence. The three letters hold an entry of their own, and the spelled-out phrase names the ambition behind them. An entry for the short form suggests readers meet the letters by themselves and need somewhere to decode them.

Researchers apply the label to AI models whose general cognitive ability matches human intelligence or may surpass it. A second study frames AGI as a hypothetical form of machine intelligence able to understand or learn any intellectual task a person can. Both accounts measure the machine against people. Human thinking serves as the yardstick, and the term loses its meaning without it.

"General" marks the dividing line in the second study. Its authors set AGI against narrow AI, which developers build for one limited job such as facial recognition. In their account, AGI could outdo people at almost every mental task. A program that recognizes faces stays confined to that single job, however well the program performs. Breadth separates the two categories.

The two studies set the bar at different heights. One treats parity with the human mind as enough to qualify. The other pictures a system that beats people across nearly every kind of thinking. A reader who looks up the term inherits both thresholds under one abbreviation. The research leaves open where AGI begins, while the dictionary has settled on its name.

PIPELINE-SHORTFALL: Slide 9 (AGI) runs about 240 words, short of the 300-word minimum. The source does nothing more than spell out the abbreviation as artificial general intelligence, and the three approved AGI details are all in use. No further grounded fact exists to add without padding.

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Uncanny valley joins the dictionary's technology additions as the name for the eerie jolt someone feels when an artificial creation resembles a person but falls short.

Compute, vibe coding, and AGI arrive under the same technology heading, yet the editors define uncanny valley through a viewer's reaction. The term places its meaning in the observer and in how a machine-made thing strikes the person looking at it.

The definition confines the discomfort to a narrow gap. A creation must approach a lifelike appearance before anything feels wrong, and its failure to close the final distance triggers the chill.

The entry's arrival suggests near-human artificial figures have grown common enough that people needed a shared word for the disquiet they provoke.

Slide 10 (uncanny valley) runs about 110 words, short of the 300-word minimum. The source gives a single descriptive gloss for the term, and the approved web details include nothing on uncanny valley.

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The new superfood entry applies to any food rich in nutrients, and the dictionary names salmon, broccoli, and blueberries as its examples. The definition asks for one quality and nothing more. It sets no calorie threshold, singles out no vitamin or mineral, and promises no health outcome.

The three examples span a fish, a vegetable, and a fruit. Their spread carries the word across the plate. No single food group can claim it. The examples also sit inside a "such as" clause, which marks them as illustrations instead of a closed list. Readers can measure any other nourishing item against the same standard of nutrient richness.

Superfood stands among the few additions whose complete definitions appear in the announcement, alongside shishito and cuffing season. Most other newcomers receive a one-word tag or a joke. The fuller treatment hands readers a working test they can apply at the seafood counter or the produce aisle.

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Cake pop entered the food additions with a teasing demotion from the editors, who call it a "less super" food. The joke depends on a neighbor. Superfood arrived in the same group, carrying a definition built around nutrient-rich eating. Against that healthful newcomer, the cake pop plays the sugary foil. Shishito and bao bun round out the section, yet no other food in it draws a jab aimed at a fellow entry. Setting the two foods side by side lets the announcement poke fun at its own list even as it records a dessert as standard vocabulary.

The dictionary defines a cake pop as a kind of lollipop formed from a packed ball of cake crumbs mixed with icing. A dip in chocolate or a sugar-based coating seals each ball. Many cake pops then wear a final layer of sprinkles or piped icing. Filing the treat under lollipops ties the new entry to a familiar candy category. Each ingredient in that description belongs to the bakery case or the sweets aisle. None of it resembles the wholesome fare that superfood covers. The "less super" tag, read beside the formal wording, turns out to be an accurate verdict dressed as a joke.

James A. Fussell, quoted on the same entry page, recounted the original cake pop as cake ground to fine crumbs, blended with frosting, chilled, and then decorated. His account and today's entry rest on one core of crumbs bound by a sweet spread. Chilling shows up in his version and vanishes from the official text, but decoration survives in both. The treat's basic formula has held from the earliest version Fussell described to the page that now records it. A dessert whose recipe stayed intact from its debut to a reference work gives editors a fixed target to pin down, with no drift in meaning to chase.

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The shishito enters the dictionary as a slender chili pepper from East Asia that tends to run mild. Its entry packs three traits into one line: shape, origin, and pungency. Each trait hands a cook a separate clue about the pepper before it reaches the pan.

The word "usually" carries the definition's most careful judgment. In the editors' wording, mildness describes the typical pod and allows for the occasional one that bites harder. A reader can expect gentle warmth from most shishitos and should stay ready for an exception.

East Asia gives the pepper a home region. The quoted line says nothing of color or of taste beyond heat, so shape, origin, and heat carry the whole description. A slender profile lets a shopper spot one by sight at a produce stand. Region and silhouette equip someone who has never tasted a shishito to recognize it and place it on a map.

The shishito is the sole plant among the food newcomers the editors highlight. Superfood labels a whole category of nutrient-rich foods. Cake pop denotes a dessert, and bao bun a dish. No other food term in the group points to an ingredient a buyer could carry home whole.

Shishito belongs to a trio of words whose meanings the announcement quotes in full, alongside superfood and cuffing season. Superfood is the only other culinary term to receive that treatment. Cake pop and bao bun each draw a quip with no explanation attached. A reader who finishes the announcement knows what a shishito is, while cake pop and bao bun remain punch lines until that reader looks them up.

Illustration: Quartz

Bao bun arrives among the food additions with a serving tip attached, as the editors joke that the bun might taste delicious with chili crisp. The announcement offers this quip in place of a gloss for the term. It never claims chili crisp earned a spot of its own. The joke casts chili crisp as a partner for the bun and nothing more.

The quip lands only for readers who know both foods. It treats the bun as a dish people order and dress up at a meal, a sign the term reached ordinary tables before it reached the dictionary.

Another reference work defines a bao, also called a bao bun, as a portion of steamed dough holding a meat or vegetable filling. The same entry traces the dish to China. Its listing treats bao as the main headword and the two-word phrase as an alternate. This update adopts the longer phrase.

This slide runs about 150 words, short of the 300-word minimum. The announcement gives bao bun only one joke about chili crisp. The approved research adds one definition and one origin detail. No further grounded fact exists to extend the slide without padding.

Illustration: Quartz

Cuffing season enters the dictionary as the stretch of the year when single people go looking for a romantic companion to see them through the cold. The definition ties courtship to the calendar. It links pairing off with the colder months and makes the season itself part of the meaning. The entry names no month or holiday. A drop in temperature sets its clock.

The wording draws a firm boundary around who takes part. Only people who are neither married nor in a relationship fit the description. Established couples fall outside it. A person who enters any relationship leaves the group the definition outlines.

Short-term may be the most telling phrase in the gloss. The editors frame the arrangement as temporary from the outset, meant to last until the weather warms and no further. The text centers on the moment the search begins. Whether anyone finds a match lies beyond what the words cover. The two details sketch a plan that expects its own end before any partner has appeared.

Cuffing season belongs to a set of three new entries, alongside superfood and shishito, whose meanings the announcement quotes word for word. The other two each fit a food into one brief phrase, a nutrient-rich item in one case and a slender pepper in the other. The cuffing season text outruns both. It has to pin down a group of people, a season, a dating goal, and a deadline.

The definition passes no judgment on the practice. It neither praises a fling of this kind nor cautions against one. The language presents the custom as ordinary conduct, a pattern of social behavior plain enough to record without comment.

Among the three quoted meanings, only this one describes a human habit, and a habit takes more words to fence in than a food does.

Illustration: Quartz

Sunday scaries enters the dictionary as the far less cozy counterpart to cuffing season, a jab from the editors that pairs two new entries and casts one as the chillier sibling.

The announcement groups the phrase with crashout among its additions about how people live and feel today. The page offers no definition for either term. A single line of contrast supplies every bit of characterization the editors provide.

The comparison turns on rhythm as much as mood. Cuffing season comes around once a year and sends people looking for a partner. The scaries return each week and pull attention toward the workdays ahead.

The slump takes one of two shapes, sadness that the weekend is ending or anxiety about the week to come, and some people feel both at once. Either version tends to settle in on Sunday afternoon, while part of the weekend still remains.

Susanne Cooperman, a neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst at New York University Langone Huntington Medical Group, calls the experience very common. She draws the line between routine unease and a real problem at daily functioning. A person needs help, in her view, once the feelings bring trouble focusing, trouble sleeping, or drinking alcohol to medicate them.

The editors' wisecrack fits the everyday version of the feeling. Cooperman's threshold shows where the same Sunday unease stops being a joke and starts to call for support.

Slide 16 runs about 230 words, short of the 300-word minimum. The source gives Sunday scaries only a one-line comparison with cuffing season and a grouping with crashout, and the approved web details on the term are fully used. No further genuine fact is available, so the slide was not padded.

Illustration: Quartz

Neckbeard enters the dictionary with a definition that spans both the whiskers themselves and the supposed culture of the people who wear them. A single headword now carries a physical description and a social one.

The editors call the new definition "groomed," a pun suited to a word about facial hair. The joke belongs to a run of wordplay in the announcement, which also has the dictionary slipping into shapewear and recognizing copium without taking a dose.

The qualifier "supposed" carries the most weight in the entry. It frames the wearers' shared lifestyle as a label outsiders apply, one the dictionary declines to vouch for. By recording the stereotype, the dictionary also flags it as one.

The second half of the entry reaches beyond appearance. A word that describes a patch of hair under the chin now also sketches the people assumed to grow it. Writers who reach for the term can now cite a reference that names the stereotype without endorsing it.

Illustration: Quartz

Whack-a-mole enters the dictionary with a single-word verdict from its editors, who call it "frantic." They file it among the additions that capture how people live and feel today. Their joke about the term mimics the game it names. The phrase, they write, keeps popping up in the language.

"Frantic" sets whack-a-mole apart from two neighbors in that thematic cluster. The lexicographers tag both yacht rock and California sober as "mellow." Whack-a-mole sits at the opposite pole. Within one group, the vocabulary of daily life stretches from the relaxed to the hectic.

Medical researchers have adopted the same image as a clinical label. PubMed lists a case series of four patients with functional movement disorders who showed what the authors called the "whack-a-mole" sign. The authors drew the name from the arcade game, in which a mole that a player knocks back into the hole it first came out of reappears at a different spot.

The game's mechanics mirror the dictionary staff's pun. A mole that resurfaces somewhere new behaves like a phrase that keeps turning up in fresh corners of the language. The pace of play fits the "frantic" tag as well. Every mole a player knocks down rises again at another spot. The player never gets ahead.

The same picture of a popping mole now serves two audiences: everyday speakers and clinicians who study functional movement disorders.

Illustration: Quartz

Yacht rock claims one of four slots in the subtitle of this year's announcement, where it appears beside vibe coding, parasocial, and Mandela Effect. The editors chose those four terms to introduce the whole batch of additions.

A single adjective carries the editors' view of the term: mellow. They file yacht rock among the entries on how people live and feel today. Whack-a-mole, which the announcement calls frantic, sits in the same group. The theme therefore holds both calm and hectic moods.

The announcement supplies no definition, origin, or first-use date for yacht rock. Its place in the subtitle is the most concrete detail the page offers.

Yacht rock is the only subtitle term drawn from the live-and-feel group. Vibe coding comes from technology, parasocial from social media culture, and Mandela Effect from the closing dictionary jokes. The four billed terms span the announcement's themes, and yacht rock stands in for everyday life.

This slide falls short of the 300-word minimum. The source gives yacht rock only a one-word characterization (mellow) and its subtitle placement, and the approved research holds no details on the term.