'Brain rot' Oxford's word of the year reflects ‘trivial use’ of social media

London: The term ‘brain rot’ that was first recorded in 1854 by American author Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden has become Oxford Word Of The Year 2024.

Other words shortlisted for this year alongside brain rot were demure, lore, romantasy, slop and dynamic pricing, reports say.

Those who binge-watch videos online can perhaps understand what brain rote means as it suggests deterioration of mental or intellectual capacities of a person.

The Oxford Press defines the word as ‘the supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging’.

Gaining a new meaning, the term brain rot has become popular on social media, especially in our era of overconsumption of social media content.

However, in 2024 brain rot is used to point to the low-quality, low-value content found on social media and their negative impact on individual and society, according to the report.

The term now has entered mainstream journalism expressing growing concerns about the reckless consumption of online content.

Casper Grathwohl, President, Oxford Languages, said that the term brain rot indicate the ‘perceived dangers of virtual life’, adding ‘It’s not surprising that so many voters embraced the term, endorsing it as our choice this year’.

Oxford Word of the Year is all about choosing a word or expression that reflects lasting cultural significance or sums up society over the past twelve months.

Experts at Oxford University Press (OUP) track words over the year via a 26-billion-word corpus of global language data.

The words or expressions that OUP picked earlier include ‘selfie’ (2013), ‘climate emergency’ (2019), and ‘vax’ (2021).

After OUP has opened the selection process to the public in 2022, the words or expression thus selected include ‘goblin mode’ (2022) and ‘rizz’ last year.