Collins' Word of the Year 2025: Vibe Coding (blog.collinsdictionary.com)

Collins’ Word of the Year 2025 is “vibe coding,” a term popularized by Andrej Karpathy that describes using AI prompted in natural language to write software — essentially telling a model what you want instead of hand-crafting syntax. The choice signals how mainstream the idea of conversational programming has become: it’s shorthand for a shift from typing code to curating prompts, and it has resonated beyond developer circles as shorthand for wider AI-driven convenience. For the AI/ML community, vibe coding crystallizes several technical and practical implications. Natural-language-to-code workflows foreground prompt engineering, model-conditioned code synthesis, and tighter IDE–LLM integration, while raising hard questions about correctness, testability, security, provenance, and maintainability of generated code. It also accelerates automation of routine engineering tasks and entry-level work, reshaping hiring and tooling demands. The broader Collins shortlist — including “clanker” (derogatory for AI/robots), “broligarchy,” and “taskmasking” — underscores public ambivalence: excitement about productivity gains tempered by concerns over power, job displacement, and authenticity. Practitioners should focus on robust evaluation, reproducibility, and governance as natural-language coding becomes a default developer interface.