‘Parasocial’ Crowned Cambridge Dictionary Word Of 2025

If you experience a profound, unilateral attachment to pop stars or prominent personalities on the internet despite never having encountered them in person, then your conduct is deemed “parasocial”, as stated by the Cambridge Dictionary, which on Tuesday, November 18, announced the adjective as its Word of the Year for 2025.

Lexicographers chose the term during a year characterized by heightened public fascination with the one-sided connections individuals develop with celebrities, social media influencers, and, more and more, AI chatbots.

Parasocial is described as “involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know.”

The word itself is far from recent; it originated in 1956 when two sociologists from the University of Chicago observed television audiences forming these kinds of relationships with on-screen personalities, treating them with the same level of intimacy as dear friends or relatives.

Nevertheless, this particular year witnessed a dramatic surge in the term’s usage as online platforms intensified the sense of intimacy between well-known figures and their followers.

Simone Schnall, a professor of experimental social psychology at the University of Cambridge, praised the selection as “inspired,” pointing out that numerous individuals are currently developing “unhealthy and intense parasocial relationships with influencers.”

Moreover, with artificial intelligence becoming an ever-present feature in daily life, these patterns are acquiring a fresh significance: “many people treat AI tools like ChatGPT as ‘friends’, offering positive affirmations, or as a proxy for therapy,” she further remarked.

The influence of online culture on the English language is impossible to overlook, molding the ways we express ourselves and giving rise to fresh additions in dictionaries.

Colin McIntosh, a lexicographer at the Cambridge Dictionary, explained that they include only those terms believed to possess “staying power,” declaring, “Internet culture is changing the English language and the effect is fascinating to observe and capture in the dictionary.”

In addition to “parasocial,” the dictionary incorporated a large number of new words, phrases, and definitions over the previous 12 months, amounting to 6,212 entries in total.

Among the recent inclusions is Slop, a word that was given a revised definition to describe low-quality, AI-generated material that is increasingly flooding the internet. Another newcomer is Skibidi, a piece of slang explained as carrying various meanings, for instance cool or bad, although it may also be employed without any actual significance, simply as a humorous expression, or in constructions like: “What the skibidi are you doing?”

Furthermore, the collection features Delulu, a widely used abbreviation and twist on the term delusional, and Tradwife, an abbreviated form of traditional wife, referring to a “married woman, especially one who posts on social media, who stays at home doing cooking, cleaning.”

A Gentle Reminder: Every obstacle is a stepping stone, every morning; a chance to go again, and those little steps take you closer to your dream.

Nnamdi Okoli