Oxford Word of the Year: brain rot
Campaign · 2024
Oxford named brain rot its winner after a public vote involving over 37,000 people.
Oxford University Press
@OxUniPress · Dec 2, 2024
And the official 2024 Oxford Word of the Year is... Brain rot 📱🧠 #OxfordWOTY h
Spread Score
How it worksNumbers
- OUP’s Dec 2, 2024 brain rot winner X announcement; live lower bound
- 411.1K
- As of Oct 26, 2026 · X · Oxford University Press on X; view counter measured by X
- Milestone date
- Week of Dec 2, 2024
- Nov 14 ’24 to Week of Dec 2, 2024
- Platforms
- 3
- Started on Open web
- Origin
- Seeded
- Media & publishing
How it spread
Trace the originOxford opened a public shortlist vote, drew news coverage, then named brain rot its winner. The Guardian made a quiz. The phrase later entered the OED and Oxford’s API datasets.
Documented milestone; not a measured attention peak. Some dates are known only to the week, month or year.
Timeline (11)
November 2024
BBC News press · Nov 18 ’24
BBC News asked what Oxford’s word of the year should be.[3]
Join free to see why it worked and the other 8 events. Free, on every case.
Spread the same way
Do this
- 1Invite participation before announcing an editorial choice.
Every number (5)
- Participants in the full shortlist vote; more than“more than 37,000 people had their say”37K[4]
Press (1 outlet)
- Dec 1, 202417 days in
BBC News · Losing your mind looking at memes? The dictionary has a word for that - BBC News
You’ve seen 1 of 3 steps and 1 of 5 numbers. Pro opens the rest, with all 12 sources.