Tech vocabulary has a way of settling into ordinary speech, even for people who don’t follow every product launch. Dictionary lists now routinely feature words that began in digital culture, and that makes it a good moment to look at which terms have earned a permanent place and which have quietly slipped away.
Collins dictionary recently released its list of new and notable words for 2026, including p(doom), the probability of AI-caused doom; mogging, meaning to outshine someone; friendslop, a low-budget video game played among friends; and ghost jobs, advertised positions with no real intent to hire. Vibe-coding, Collins’ 2025 Word of the Year, describes a conversational way to teach an AI model without typing code. Enshittification, chosen by the American Dialect Society as its 2023 Word of the Year, refers to the gradual, profit-driven decline in quality of just about everything.
Whether or not those terms last, some older ones already have. Here are five that survived and five that did not.
Five tech terms that stuck around
Selfie. The word for a of yourself taken with any camera-enabled device was first used in 2002 on an Australian internet chat forum. It took until 2013 to become mainstream, but now it needs no explanation.
Content creator. This describes someone who shares information on a tech platform and builds an audience of online followers. “Influencer” is a close synonym. A related word, “parasocial,” refers to the one-sided relationship a viewer or listener may feel with a creator who does not know they exist.
Podcast. Oxford Dictionary named podcast its Word of the Year in 2005. The term blends iPod and broadcast, and it refers to a digital program made available on demand for streaming or download. The iPod itself was discontinued in 2022, but the podcast name kept going.
WFH. Short for work from home, the abbreviation saw a substantial uptick during and after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. A 2022 survey by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 23% of Americans work remotely.
Unfriend. The New Oxford American Dictionary made it Word of the Year in 2009, and Facebook helped popularize it. But the term for ending a friendship is much older. NPR called it “the Sleeping Beauty of words,” noting it dates back to the 17th century with essentially the same meaning.
Five tech terms that faded
Metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg put roughly $80 billion into a virtual reality project that was promoted as the internet platform of the future. The metaverse and its flagship app, Horizon Worlds, were announced in 2021. Five years later, the effort had fallen apart, and Zuckerberg is now investing heavily in AI, which he touts as the next internet technology.
NFT. Nonfungible tokens are digital identifiers that certify ownership of a digital thing of value. A couple of years ago, they were everywhere online, and President Donald Trump even released one. After the boom and the subsequent crash in value of most of them, the term has all but left public consciousness.
World Wide Web. It is the internet, folks. Or the information superhighway, if you prefer.
Defrag. When Windows-based computers needed better performance, people would defragment the hard drive, often with third-party tools. That is apparently no longer something people do, though the word still works well in everyday situations. As in: I will be right back; I need to defrag the car.
Emoticon. Technically, emoticons are made from standard keyboard characters read sideways, such as 🙂 to make a smiley face. Emoji are graphical images selected in communication programs. These days, people just say emoji, even if the word sounds more like a dessert.
