Merriam-Webster Word of the Year 2026?
Aired 24 August 2026 · written 20 August, when larping was 11%
The market we based this episode on
The board on 20 August 2026, the day the script was written. A price is the market’s odds of that outcome.
| larping | 11% | |
| Vibe | 10% | |
| Brainrot | 10% | |
| Semiquincentennial | 8% | |
| Agentic | 7% | |
| Performative | 6% | |
| Lore | 2% | |
| AI | 2% |
Why we chose it
This market is a bet on which slang survives to December, and the board is basically the 2026 internet in miniature. "Larping" is the live one: Gen Z spent this summer repurposing it from nerd hobby to all-purpose authenticity insult — calling out anyone acting in ways that lack personal authenticity, including people "larping" the World Cup by skipping games and consuming only TikTok clips. It's this year's "performative" — which, note, was already a Merriam-Webster runner-up in 2025, and runners-up almost never win the next year.
Key mechanics: MW's pick is based largely on spikes in search data, which is why "semiquincentennial" lurks — America's 250th on July 4 guaranteed a lookup tsunami for an unspellable word, exactly the "conclave"-style news spike MW loves. Headwinds elsewhere: brainrot was already Oxford's 2024 word, "vibe coding" was Collins' 2025 pick, and MW just did an AI word with slop — dictionaries hate repeating each other. The board sums to only ~58%, so the market itself thinks the winner probably isn't listed yet. December word, August prices.
What we thought
How it’s moved since
Daily price. The dotted line is the day the episode was written — the odds Sal and Eddie were looking at. The solid line is the day it aired.
Biggest move since: Vibe, down from 10% on the day the episode was written to 3% today.