How an OpenAI Engineer’s Term, “Vibe Coding,” Came to Define 2025

The 2025 Word of the Year, as named by Collins Dictionary, came directly from the mind of a key figure at the heart of the AI revolution. “Vibe coding,” a term coined by Andrej Karpathy, a founding engineer at OpenAI and former Tesla AI lead, has been crowned the word that best reflects the past year’s linguistic and technological trends.
Karpathy first used the term in February to describe a future of software development where the “vibe” of an idea is all that’s needed. In this model, a user describes their goal in natural language, and an AI translates it into code, allowing the creator to “forget that the code even exists.” This concept clearly resonated, as Collins lexicographers tracked a “huge increase” in its usage.
The selection of a term from an OpenAI engineer is symbolic. It highlights how the innovations emerging from AI labs are no longer niche topics but are now powerful enough to fundamentally alter our language and our creative processes. Alex Beecroft, Collins’ MD, called it a “seamless integration of human creativity and machine intelligence.”
This AI-driven term beat a list full of other modern concepts. The Star Wars-derived AI insult “clanker” was a top contender, representing the public’s backlash to the same technology. The list also featured “broligarchy,” a nickname for the tech elite like Karpathy’s own bosses.
Other entries included “biohacking” (DIY health optimization), “Henry” (high earner, not rich yet), “taskmasking” (faking productivity), and “aura farming” (curating a cool persona). Together, they paint a picture of a world being reshaped, and renamed, by its new technologies.