A term rooted in internet culture has been named Collins Dictionary’s word of the year, highlighting how quickly online language can cross into everyday speech. “Mogging” means outshining, outperforming or making another person or thing look inferior by comparison.

Coverage from the left frames the choice chiefly as a story of linguistic change. Collins recorded a 210% rise in use during 2026, with the term spreading among Gen Z and Gen Alpha both online and offline.¹ Managing director Alex Beecroft said the selection “shows how each generation leaves its mark on language,” describing mogging as humorous slang through which younger users are “making the language their own.”¹

That account also notes a more complicated origin. The word is widely traced to AMOG, or “Alpha Male of the Group,” and appeared in bodybuilding forums around 2016 before circulating through other online spaces. Yet Collins copywriter Rachel Quin argued that its current use is far broader: “Teenagers mog elite athletes, a new video game mogs an old favourite, and your friend’s sourdough mogs the loaf you spent all weekend proving.”²

Right-leaning coverage emphasizes the comic potential of the result, including a pun from presenter Jacob Rees-Mogg, who called the decision “mognificent” and predicted a related coinage might follow.³ It likewise acknowledges that the word is not derived from his name and that it has travelled well beyond its initial niche.

The accounts converge on that mainstreaming, but place different weight on it: one sees a generational imprint on English, while the other foregrounds the joke and the word’s culture-war-adjacent online journey. Other shortlisted terms, including “Manchesterism,” “ghost job,” “hydration break” and “p(doom),” reflected politics, work, climate and technological anxiety.²