The Chaser Report - How the Word of the Year Gets Chosen

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

The AI Slopaganda wars are here as Macquarie Dictionary Executive Editor Victoria Morgan sits down with Charles to discuss the dictionary’s word of the year, some runner ups and their new Paul Keating-quoting book Dirty Politics: A–Z of Trickery, Treachery and other Tasty Treats.Order the 2025 CHASER ANNUAL: https://chasershop.com/products/the-chaser-and-the-shovel-annual-2025-preorderListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Now, Dom is actually away. He's up at some conference on the Gold Coast, so presumably he's drunk. You know, Dom, he's really, well, he's just a druggie drunk, really, isn't he? But instead, today, I'm very excited. excited to say, we actually had the editor, the executive editor of the Macquarie Dictionary

with us, Victoria Morgan. And it just so happens that today they've launched their word of the year as well as launching a new book called Dirty Politics, which we'll get to in a second. But Victoria, welcome to the show. Welcome. I think Dom might be out acting as a tolly from what I understand at this time of year. Yes, because is it still schoolies up there? Yeah, maybe he is.

Yeah, I think they've just kicked off just a couple days ago, so right in the swing. Oh, so that's why he's up at a week-long, quote-unquote, conference on the Gold Coast. Oh, actually, yeah, so, yeah, okay, right. So presumably we'll see news reports of him at some point, you know, getting into all sorts of trouble. Do you think he could pass for a, I think he could pass for a toolie, couldn't he? Well, it depends what time of night, maybe. Yeah, that's right. So, Victoria,

you have, McCrady Cichinery has just announced their Word of the Year. That's this, today, it happened, didn't it? It did. So before we get to the Word of the Year, what were, there was about nine runner-ups, weren't there? There were quite a lot of runner-ups. Should we run through a few of them first?

Because then we can sort of create a sense of suspense around what is the Word of the Year. Although, actually, it would have been reported. in the press by the time people have listened to this. But let's just go through some of them because some of them I don't even know what they mean. Like quad ball. What's quad ball? Quad ball is interesting because it's just a

renaming of Quidditch. So Quidditch itself is a little bit odd but that was a sport, a real-life sport taken to imitate the riding around on broomsticks throwing balls through hoops from Harry Potter. Yes. And a lot of people, you know, including Dom, who's a huge,

Harry Potter fan. I love how we're now talking about him in the past tense as if he's died or something. But he was a huge Harry Potter fan. And he, along with all the Harry Potter fans would complain that Quidditch didn't make actually any sense, did it? Like, it was a stupid game where the rules didn't make any sense because... Well, you are supposed to be flying. So that's a sort of one little miss hit to start.

Well, yes, exactly. But also, like, the whole one half of the activity. was not actually a thing that then meant that you won the game. Like, it was some other little ball that you had to catch that actually won you the game. So why would you do all the other stuff? But the point is, obviously, like, why would you play football? Like, it's the same as rules of real football. So, but so why is it now called quad ball?

Is this a sort of trans thing? Is it because everyone hates J.K. Rally? It's interesting. Well, there's always sort of been the, sort of that grey area of a copyright and IP of calling it Quidditch in the first place. But it has been a push from the players and the sort of the sports body themselves to distance themselves from the author J.K. Rowling. Wait, wait, wait.

Because of her stance on transgender rights. So there's a real quad ball Quidditch League, is there? Yeah, it's an international sport. And Australia actually won one year. I can't remember one year. They won the international world quidditch or quad ball tournaments. It would have been called quidditch then, I think. So it is real.

So people can fly? No, that's why I said there's a little bit of a fault in the, maybe a flaw in the sport. It doesn't quite translate because they run around with a long stick between their legs, which is in place of a broomstick. It's very entertaining to watch. I'm going to force my kids to play it next season. Instead of soccer or AFL, I'm going to say, no, you've got to do Quidditch this season. It does have quite a following.

So it is here for a reason. And while Quidditch for the sport, where they are running on the ground and not flying, had been in the dictionary for a few years, we just thought from a language shift perspective and reasons why language shifts, this was a very good contender to have in the sports category. Yes. So this was sort of, we do look at. you know, a good 13, 15 different subject categories to make sure we're sort of looking

at all areas of language and that tends to make up what this shortlist is and that's what usually goes, that this is what goes out to the public because the public always want to have a look to see what's new or, you know, have their say. No, it's fascinating. So what is BAL rating? There was another one shortlisted. Yeah, so that's a bell rating. It stands for Bushfire attack level rating.

This is from the environment's category. And it's a system where they can assess the building's potential exposure to a bushfire attack. And so they rate it to make sure that you've got certain construction measures in place or if you're near the construction that you make those. Or if you want to have a more spectacular fire of your house, a lower bow rating, presumably. Like if you want to... That would correspond quite. nicely, I would say.

Yeah. Well, that's nice. That's sort of like, it's a sort of climate dystopia word that we're all going to need to know in the future. I think if your premises gets looked at, we're all quite concerned about the bow rating. But I think it is in perspective of the Australian environment, it's one of the more serious ones on as a contender. Okay. And now, Fem gore. That sounds good. What was that? Oh, Femgore is great. So Femgore is from our arts category and there was a bit of towing and throwing whether it should be Femgore or body horror that won out there. And Femgore is a subgenre of horror. And here's where the female protagonist, but they actually give an agency over the narrative. So yes, while they're being chased or

attacked or objectified or exploited, which is often the case. They're definitely not passive, and they often become the characters who then sort of turn and retaliate and commit those acts of violence. So it's sort of a, yeah, a very interesting subgenre of horror. So is it new? Like, is that new, or is it sort of just sort of reach the stage where McCory Dictionary goes? Okay, this has been around for years, but this is now past the threshold of just sort of. of, you know, off to the side, this is something that's going to retain relevance over the years?

Like, how do you actually choose the shortlist? Like, what's the criteria? So the base criteria is we can only look at words that have been entered into the dictionary this year. So it means that they do have enough currency to be in the dictionary in the first place. But while they're new, this is where a lot of people might say, oh, I haven't actually come across this term or it doesn't exist because I haven't heard it. That's often a common response.

But so while the term Femgore itself is quite new, there has been a shift, I guess, in the horror genre where, you know, the females are the ones who, you know, they're exploited, they're killed off. But now there's sort of a turn where they, you know, let's come out as the winner or let's, let's, you know, have a bit of revenge. So I guess it's a new term for a genre that's been gradually emerging over the last few years. Yeah, right. Wow.

Okay, well, we could go on for it. There's so many good shortlist and stories, but I'm just aware that we should sort of move on to the main event, which is first of all, we've got to declare what the word of the year is. And, well, do you want to tell us? Like, why don't you do the honours and tell us what the word of the year is? Well, the committee does choose their own word. So we have a small committee with the dictionary editorial and David Astell crossword extraordinaire and Tiger Webb,

the language extraordinaire from the ABC. Yes, who's brilliant. He is. He often appears on radio stations or on social media and sort of takes down pedants because he believes in the sort of, you know, that language lives. in the real world. It's quite a, he's a great character.

Well, we're going to have the pedants jumping in soon. Oh, no. Is it one word or two words? Oh, no. Oh, no. That's a just stupid, boring debate. Is word of the year, does it have to be one word? No, of course it doesn't.

Every year. No, yeah, every year. Just go away. If you believe that, just stop listening to this podcast. I don't care. Yeah, so this year, so the committee, we choose our own. And then we open up to the public, and the public chose the same word. So this doesn't happen very often.

So it's a double whammy here. But the 2025 word of the year from Macquarie, to me, is AI slop. A.I. Slop. Yes. Well, that's got real currency, doesn't it? Okay, so, Victoria, I've got some bad news, which is I, just before you came on, I typed into ChatGPT, I'm about to interview the editor of a new book called Dirty Politics, which is the Dictionary of Words, published by Macquarie Dictionary.

They've just announced their word of the year is AI Slop. I already knew. I saw the press release. Seeing as you're an AI, this is what I asked, chat TV. Seeing as you're an AI, what do you think I should say to her defending AI slop? And what are some tricky questions I should ask her, right? And so the first thing, so this is the first thing AI said, whereas the blunt truth is that AI slop absolutely exists, but it's not a tech problem so much as a human laziness

and platform incentives problems. It's nothing to do with AI. This is all about humans, Victoria. I put it to you, AI slop is not a criticism of AI at all. It's to do with the fact that humans are generating and then consuming this. stuff and prompting the algorithm who very innocently pushed this stuff out into the wild. We've all seen AI slob.

It's all the sort of shit that's invading Facebook and TikTok and it's just rubbish. And we all know that's why everyone voted for it, you know, on the committee and everything. But it's not the AI's fault. You're blaming the victim here. It's us wanting the slop by actually engaging with it and allowing it through into our brains. I hate to say, does have a point. No.

No, I think it's the problem that if you do actually ask something, you'll often return something that just has mistakes in. It's problematic. And that I guess that there is onus on us is not just to be a critical thinker, but we need to check everything we can't rely on. Anyone who is going to rely on what comes out, the future is looking very bleak. Yeah.

But isn't it, it's a sort of, of double problem, isn't it? Because AI slop, I think, comes about because AI is so confident in its wrongness. It's not just that it sort of says, oh, I don't know, but here's a definition of meiosis or whatever. It sort of goes, here's the definition of meiosis. You know, you can absolutely write this down. Here's a whole lot of footnotes that are convincing sounding. And then you look at Arb. I'm using that example because I was helping my son on the weekend do a project on meiosis and we looked it up on ChachypT and it just gave a completely incorrect definition of meiosis and this was the latest Chachapit T like it was a very like it took a couple of

minutes to come up with this definition and then it turned out to be just completely wrong like you're right we did check it but it's still wrong I kind of feel like that is the AIS4 like in the rest of life you don't assume that somebody who's well I suppose actually you do in fact that is the whole point about life isn't it? That it's replete with people who are very confident, but also generate huge amounts of slop and stuff that, you know, is just untrue. I guess if it's a person, then if they were saying something like this, they're outright lying to your face. Yes, which actually brings us. Whereas AI is hiding behind this. I think, I think one very early example when I was just sort of

playing around. And it's got some great uses. It definitely does. But I think I just typed in how many ease does the word emergence have? And it's like five or three. And it's like, oh, hang, hang on a second, hang on. And it's like, I'm going to ask you again. And, you know, you have to double down and double down and until you say, oh, I'm given it to you, it only has four. Oh, oh, yes, you are correct. And I don't know where they would be getting that information from. And I think the term AI slop as well, it's really just, it's something that all of us have encountered. Whether we're asking for information or whether we've just been dumped with all these videos or images or everything generated.

And it even includes the deep fakes we're seeing. I'm just absolutely terrified in, I guess, what era, you know, is an era of fake news and misinformation, that this just makes it a hundred times easier and quicker to disseminate and get out there, which is what we call sloppaganda. Oh, nice. Did you invent that? Or is that a real, that's a, from the wild, or did you just invent that? I wish I invented it, but no, it's just starting.

to pick up a bit of traction. So wait till the next election season. And we've already seen it go around in practice, but the term itself will, yeah. How can we, you know, very easily, quickly sway your political views? It doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong. What I would say, though, is I reckon, like, there's, it actually makes me quite optimistic about the future.

I kind of feel like we've been in this. fake news or just sort of like, like the sort of boundaries between fact and fiction have been getting more and more blurred, literally since the rise of social media. Like it's very, you know, back in the day when, you know, you had printed newspapers and there were lots of media gatekeepers, it was, there was sort of editorial standards and there was a sort of very, you know, robust sense of truth and not truth. right. And it was very mediated as well. There was both benefits to that, but also huge downsides in sort of forming what you thought about the world. But then social media meant that any

website could look convincingly like it knew what it was talking about. And so you had this sort of real blurring of lines between fact and fiction. But AI slop has just sort of massively accelerated that so you can't really even distinguish, you know, what videos are true or what not anymore. And I kind of feel like that's actually a good thing rather than a bad thing because it means that genuinely authentic media sources, like say, for example, shitty podcasts about Australian politics put out by The Chaser and, you know, I don't know, live shows that tour around Australia and the world are going to be sources of information that people actually come to, you know, respect and value because it's not about the trustworthiness

of the actual source of information, like the actual sort of facts, because nobody knows what a fact is. It's the parasycial relationships and the trust of the messenger, right? And I'm talking about myself here. You know, like, I become the arbiter of truth and what's AI slop and what you should believe. So do you think that that's a bit of a benefit? I think eventually, I think it's going to take. a little more time to get there. So we just need to survive to all then, Charles. We just need to get

through it. So I, because I you're wrong before before the sources that you'll go to, um, they were trusted to very extent. There was still a spectrum of, you know, how trustworthy something was, but there were repercussions. So you couldn't, if you did put something out there that, um, was pure misinformation or fake news you'll be pulled up on it there would and there would be repercussions and penalties and now there's not so it doesn't matter who is coming out with what and I think that the AI slop and just because the tech has advanced so quickly and like any tech it can be used in a positive way or a negative way and you know there's people using this for evil really but that is now for certain people I think and whether it's media or your podcast or even the

dictionary itself it should increase the value in this is actually a respected resource we're not out there to get attention we're not out there to do ABC but if you you know it's up to the user to decide what is it that they want have you ever toyed with the idea of actually using the Macquarie Dictionary for nefarious purposes, like, for evil? You know, like taking its respected, trusted brand and just sort of doing some evil with it. It's got to be tempting. Like putting things in, to see if anyone notices. Yeah, just sort of, come on.

I only in the, you know, the test database and you just have to remember to get it back out before it was like. But I guess we've always loved the, there's always that go-to line. Oh, if you want to know, you know, the definition of a wanker, look up so-and-so in Macquarie Dictionary. Yes, yes, right, okay. So that's quite standard. And I do love someone, I think they published their own sort of fiction book. It was a self-published book. And they were by themselves at night and heard these, you know, noises they thought someone was breaking

in so they were looking for a weapon, something to protect themselves with. And the closest thing at hand was a big Macquarie Dictionary that weighed a ton and would knock them out. And they put it in a pillowcase and I thought, there's my girl. Yep, that's good. Yep. Ha-ha, the pennies might end of the sword. The Chaser Report, now asbestos free.

Okay, so, Victoria, we're now going to talk about your book, Dirty Politics. you've just put out, which I would put to you is sort of like human-generated slob. Because what you've done is you've written a book of words of all the sort of mealy-mouthed sort of, you know, terms that politicians and politics uses to sort of lie and scream out of accountability and all that sort of stuff. Like, this is human slop. You've put together a dictionary of essentially human slop, I put it to you. It is. It's the human bucket of bad behaviours. I just think globally and, you know, nationally and globally, we're all just a little bit disaffected. We're jaded and disillusioned. And again, there doesn't seem to be any

accountability for anything. And there was just a few new terms that were sort of going into the dictionary. And this is where the word of the year sort of tied into it slightly. I just sort of thought, oh, the politics category this year is going to be wild. There was just a lot to choose from. So I just sort of thought it would be worth having just a quick look back on how many things sort of were featured in the politics category of the word of the year and how many of those do tend to sort of highlight this pretty shit behaviour. And so I decided to put out this book.

Yeah, there's sort of like there's hundreds of words. and, you know, it's things like the non-core promise, you know, nothing to see here, you know, past the back, performing, you know, they're just wonderful terms. Did you have to sort of adjust it so that not every word came from a Paul Keating quib? I noticed Paul Keating has quite a lot of, you know, sort of quotes in the book. Well, the quotes are, I think, sort of my favourite element of the book. book, because you would not believe that any of these came out of a fully formed adult's mouth, let alone a politician.

But it just tends to be that Paul Keating was the most eloquent. And while he does feature quite heavily, we just couldn't leave some of these out. I mean, in fairness, it's not just Paul Keating. I mean, he also had Tony Abbott, and I quote, you know, no one, however smart, however well educated, however experienced, is the suppository of all wisdom. You know, very eloquent. I mean, Keating-esque, really, that quote from Tony Evans. Yeah, so, and there's lots of, and I noticed that actually a lot of them, like a lot of

the great ones, like the precarious, I remember the precariet, when was that 2014, post-truth, are ones that ended up being contenders for Word of the Year. Did any of them actually make it as Word of the Year? They did. They normally don't tend to win, but they do rate up there. So probably the first big one that we had, and this was actually, again, people and committee's choice, it's not hugely interesting because it already existed in the world of sport,

but it was captain's call. And this was in 2015 when Tony Abbott was in power and started making sort of decisions. maybe without consultation. So that very much dominated the landscape that year. Well, including giving a knighthood to Prince Philip, that was the one that I think brought him down. Yeah, that was the favourite.

Yeah, it was a real captain's call. And then the year after we had fake news. Yes. So, but this stemmed out from US politics, and this is sort of where everything else is sort of, I guess, spawned from. We had Robo Debt. Robo Debt was a people's choice. in 2019, that was sort of fascinating because despite the government giving it all these

types of, you know, hundreds of different names and saying that under no circumstances is any of this process automated, the media and the public dubbed it the Robo Debt Scheme and the Debtz themselves, Robo Debtz. And it just affected that many people for that long, that the people, that was just an overwhelming when we saw the voting spike, that just went straight to the top. Yeah, wow, isn't that amazing? And also Teals, that was the other one that won the word of the year. Oh, stroll out.

Also the vaccination stroll out one word of the year. Yes, stroll out was also, that's a great word. That was a double whammy, stroll out. So this is a point of time that we can all look back to. Yes. And I think around the, you know, sort of the pandemic period as well, I don't think that we had ever seen such a creation of new language. Yeah, right.

Created around a certain thing since the World Wars. Yeah. Since probably World War II. And is that because everyone was so bored that they just had to create new world? I think we were facing something completely new. Yes. There was everything needed this new terminology. And then with people stuck at home, then it became, you know, yes, it's called COVID-19.

but then, you know, then it's called the rona if you're in Australia because we just have to have a bit of fun with something. Then it turns into the boomer remover, which is awful, but I'm sorry, it was. Just talking scientifically. So over that time, we actually created a whole new word of the year just for the language generated. So we're very happy to say that that's disappeared now. Yes.

But probably the latest politics one, which isn't directly politics, but it definitely did fall under there, was COSI lives. Yes, that's right. It was just a way of saying cost of living. And again, what tends to be the word of the year, really, it usually is something in society that is taking our interest or concern, and it's sort of overwhelmingly affecting all of us. We might not know the term, but that's sort of,

This is the whole thing. This is what's affecting us. Here is the term for it. And Cozy Libs was 2023. It's still around. It's not going away. Yeah. Well, at least a stroll out went away.

Yeah, I know. Yeah. No, but Cozey Leaves is here forever. Yeah, I mean, I use it. I use it all the time. What about the Cozey Leaves? Okay, well, look, Victoria, wonderful job. Like, it is a very entertaining read, dirty politics.

It's out today in bookstores, so, I don't know, by, perfect stocking, feel like, perfect for giving anyone in your life, you know, for Christmas who, like politics, whatever. Congratulations on the word of the year. So what are you, what's your follow-up going to be after dirty politics? Like, are you going to do a dictionary of, I was thinking, like, because I do wankanomics, which is, like, obviously, wanker words for sort of corporate and workplace and everything like that. So can I, can I just get you to not? do a dictionary on that because that's sort of treading on my um i'm not going to cut your garasses okay good thank you good yeah maybe because of politics it's the gift that keeps on giving so you know who else in the world is going to impose a bonk band he's going to front stab front step

has to be my favorite we just can't even be bothered ever yeah yeah yeah yeah you can just keep going forever yeah well you just interviewed bob katter each year and then you'll get enough words to fill a whole book. I know. I was just so disappointed that we couldn't have video. We need video for the book. Yeah, that's right. I think your first, isn't your first quote from Bob Katter?

Didn't even, like, I don't know why it's under B. Is it just because it's Bob? Is that why? Well, it was also, they didn't, they don't always tie in, but yeah, be for Bob or be for blossoms blooming. Yeah. You know. You've got to watch out for those crocodiles.

Yeah. All right, well, well done. Get dirty politics. Usually, by the way, Victoria, usually this would be far more sort of professionally wrapped up because Dom usually does all that sort of stuff where you sort of go, there you go, Victoria Morgan is the executive editor of the Macquarie. Oh, look, I'm doing it now.

Thank you very much. Go buy her book. Yeah, well, and then buy her book. And then that's it. I feel like I should be asking something like, are there any questions that you want to ask me? But no, that's a job interview. That's totally different. Go away.

Is that better? Oh, that's right. I've got to say this. We are part of the Oconiclass Network. Catch you tomorrow.