The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), published by Oxford University Press, defines “brain rot” as the “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state” in relation to excessive consumption of narratively devoid online content, such as TikTok videos.

The term “brain rot” is also the group’s 2024 word of the year because of its popularity this year. The organization searches through a corpus of “about 26 billion words” from news sources throughout the English-speaking world to find the “moods and conversations that have shaped 2024,” according to the New York Times.

It should be noted that the OED does not exhibit brain rot. “Rizz” and “goblin mode,” which were named the 2023 and 2022 word of the year, respectively, don’t either.

The Oxford University Press, the publishing house of the University of Oxford, has acknowledged them, but it appears that they haven’t yet demonstrated the consistent and extensive use that OED editors prefer to see first. Their wait might be lengthy.

“Tech-savvy,” one of the most recent additions to the OED, was first used in the 1980s.