Cambridge Dictionary's 2025 Word of the Year: 'Parasocial', an 'unhealthy' modern phenomenon

The Cambridge Dictionary's Word of the Year for 2025 is: "Parasocial."

The word is used to describe a relationship in which a person feels like they know a celebrity on a personal level even though they have never met them.

It's only the second time an adjective has been crowned Word of the Year, following "paranoid" in 2016, and the Cambridge Dictionary defines this year's word as: "involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they don't know, a character in a book, film, television series, etc., or an artificial intelligence."

The term was coined in 1956 by sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, who wanted to describe how television viewers formed "parasocial" relationships with television personalities.

Colin McIntosh, editor-in-chief of the Cambridge Dictionary, said the word "captures the spirit of the year 2025" and demonstrates how language is changing./CNA

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