Collins Dictionary Chooses 'Mogging' as Its 2026 Word of the Year
The slang term rose 210% in usage this year as Gen Z and Gen Alpha adopted it in playful online and everyday speech.
- Collins Dictionary named 'mogging' the 2026 Word of the Year, citing a 210% surge in usage among Gen Z and Gen Alpha. The slang term means to outshine or outperform someone.
- Despite its current playful usage, 'mogging' originated in the mid-2010s manosphere as 'AMOG,' standing for 'Alpha Male of the Group.' It initially described physical dominance in bodybuilding forums before evolving into modern slang.
- Collins Managing Director Alex Beecroft said younger generations have 'adopted a word and turned it into humorous slang,' using it ironically to describe outshining someone in appearance, confidence, or status.
- The dictionary's 10-strong shortlist also featured 'ghost job,' referring to fake job postings, and 'P,' an estimation of AI-aided civilization collapse. Both reflect 2026's societal preoccupations.
- Annually, the selection illustrates how each generation leaves its mark on language. Experts monitor the 27-billion-word Collins Corpus to identify these linguistic trends across demographics.
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76 Articles
Collins Dictionary Has Its Word of the Year
Collins Dictionary has named "mogging"—a slang word meaning to outshine someone or something—as its word of the year. Dictionary experts said Tuesday that the word, most often used by young people "in a playful and ironic way when someone is upstaged," has entered mainstream language and new a...
The word became so popular in 2026 that Hungarian politicians even adopted it.
The Collins English Dictionary on Tuesday named "mogging," a term meaning the act of outdoing another person, usually in appearance, as its word of the year.
The institution chose Tuesday, November 3rd to highlight a word born in the masculinist circles, recently popularized by the youth of generations Z and Alpha.
The authors of the authoritative English dictionary Collins Dictionary summarized 2026 and chose the main word, which turned out to be a popular term for "mogging".
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