Tired of wrestling with syntax? Just go with the vibes. That’s the essence of vibe coding, Collins’ Word of the Year 2025, a term that captures something fundamental about our evolving relationship with technology. Coined by AI pioneer Andrej Karpathy, vibe coding refers to the use of artificial intelligence prompted by natural language to write computer code. Basically, telling a machine what you want rather than painstakingly coding it yourself. It’s programming by vibes, not variables. 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.

In fact, much of the Collins’ Word of the Year shortlist reflects this further shift towards a tech-dominated world. But the runners-up on this year’s list also reveal a society grappling with authenticity in an increasingly performative world. Perhaps we’re all a bit too focused on aura farming, defined as the deliberate cultivation of a distinctive and charismatic persona that looks effortless but is anything but. This Gen Z phenomenon, which exploded after a viral video of an Indonesian boy exuding calm confidence while dancing during a boat race, captures the paradox of our age: trying to look like you’re not trying.

Meanwhile, at our hybrid but mostly back-at-the-office jobs, we’re taskmasking, giving the false impression of productivity by typing furiously on irrelevant documents or scheduling pointless meetings. Similar to 2022’s ‘quiet quitting’, it’s a quiet rebellion against return-to-office mandates that value presence over actual output.

Then there’s the broligarchy, a term that emerged to label the small clique of very wealthy tech billionaires wielding outsized political influence. With figures like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg seated prominently at the presidential inauguration, the word captures a growing unease about concentrated power in the hands of a few men who operate at the intersection of technology, wealth, and politics. It’s oligarchy with a Silicon Valley twist, and it’s reshaping democracy in real time.

But not everyone’s focused on tech overlords. Some of us are too busy biohacking, the activity of altering the natural processes of one’s body in an attempt to improve one’s health and longevity. From cryotherapy to nutrigenomics, the quest for optimisation has gone mainstream in 2025. And if you’re a **HENRY **(high earner, not rich yet), you might be investing in biohacking whilst simultaneously wondering why your six-figure salary doesn’t feel like enough. These high earners haven’t accrued substantial wealth despite impressive incomes, as they are caught between student debt, high living costs, and lifestyle expectations that keep genuine wealth just out of reach.

Speaking of escaping pressure, you can always take micro-retirements, those career breaks between periods of employment taken to pursue personal interests rather than waiting decades for a retirement that might never happen. Burnout has driven particularly Gen Z and millennial workers to hit pause, travel, recharge, or simply remember what life feels like when you’re not always ‘on’. It’s a rejection of the idea that you should defer all joy until you’re a senior citizen, but even the HENRYs might not have accrued enough capital to actually retire by then.

And when it’s time for an actual holiday? Forget the Mediterranean. Smart travellers are taking coolcations, holidays in places with cool climates. As heatwaves make traditional summer destinations unbearable, people are flocking to Norway, Iceland, and Scotland instead of your traditional sunny, beach-holiday destinations. Climate change is quite literally cooling off our holiday plans.

Yet for all our attempts at authenticity, we can’t help but **glaze **one another, defined as ‘to praise or flatter excessively, often undeservedly’. ‘Stop glazing’ has become Gen Z shorthand for calling out sycophants, a demand for realness in a world full of performative praise. Truthfully, it also makes me a little hungry, but perhaps that’s just me thinking of Homer Simpson-esque doughnuts in delightful pink glaze.

Perhaps the most telling word, though, is clanker, a derogatory term for computers, robots, or sources of artificial intelligence. Originating from the Star Wars franchise in the mid-noughties and embraced by a generation watching AI take entry-level jobs and creative opportunities, it’s both a joke and a coping mechanism. If the bots are coming for your career, you might as well have a name for them.

Many words on this year’s shortlist speak to fundamental tensions: we’re embracing AI and technology (vibe coding) whilst simultaneously resisting it (clanker, broligarchy, taskmasking). We’re chasing authenticity (calling out glazing) whilst polishing our own public personas online and offline (aura farming). We’re optimising our bodies (biohacking) and trying to optimise our bank balances (HENRY) whilst acknowledging we’re burnt out, metaphorically and sometimes literally (micro-retirement, coolcation). 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.

Written by Rachel Quin, an award-winning marketing consultant and copywriter with a love of languages, books, and cats.

All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.