From “Unc” to “Chopped,” Explaining the Most Viral Slang Terms of the Year

Every year has its own batch of flash-in-the-pan slang, which often emerges seemingly out of nowhere among younger generations (before, typically, just as often falling out of fashion a year or two later).

These days, though, with social media platforms capable of spreading memes, jokes, and new slang terms faster and more widely than ever before, it doesn’t take much for a new word to emerge and fall into use in people’s vocabularies all over the world—and then to endure online perhaps a little longer than they might once have done. 

2025 was no different, with new voguish slang terms falling into use in the past 12 months or so to describe everything from punishingly image-obsessed mothers to the increasingly inescapable world of AI technology. 10 of the year’s most iconic and most viral slang coinages are listed here. 

1. Unc
2. Whole Meal
3. Abro
4. Aura Points
5. Chopped
6. Clankers
7. “Of Course You Do, You’re 12”
8. Sigma
9. Chud
10. Almond Mom

Unc

People have been shortening “uncle” to “unc” or “unk” since the 1860s. But in the 2020s (spurred on by decades of use in African American vernacular and rap and hip-hop lyrics), the word fell into even wider use online, to refer not just to an older uncle, but any older male.

And thanks to a TikTok trend and much-circulated meme, in 2025 the term became particularly associated with a Millennial-age man stepping into their “unc status”—a Gen Z term for an older man’s laid-back, cool older-sibling vibe. 

Whole Meal

Nothing to do with bread, regrettably, if someone looks “the whole meal,” then they’re looking extremely good. This one has been around since the 2010s at least, and is a play on the earlier use of snack to mean someone attractive: that is to say, you’re not just looking like a snack, you’re looking like the whole meal. 

Abro

Derived from a Greek word meaning delicate, the term abrosexual was coined in the 2010s to refer to a shifting, more fluid kind of bisexuality or pansexuality, in which a person’s sexual attraction moves unpredictably throughout their lives, often even encompassing periods of asexuality, too. And someone who experiences just that might be playfully known as an abro. 

Aura Points

Performativeness trended on Google in the summer of 2025, as Gen Z-ers began increasingly picking up on people who do things purely to be seen to be doing them—and in particular, so-called performative males who do stereotypically sensitive things in an attempt to appeal to women. No matter who your target audience is, though, if you’re doing anything performatively, you’re “aura farming,” and in the process, attempting to gain more “aura points.”

Chopped

If you’re not looking your best, then you’re chopped. Sticking with the culinary theme, meanwhile, if you’ve failed (or are at least about to imminently fail), then you’re cooked too. 

Clankers

Robots have been somewhat disparagingly known as “clankers” since the 1950s, but it was in 2025 (amid the skyrocketing prevalence of AI) that the term took on a life of its own to express people’s growing dissatisfaction with AI-generated content and robotic technology, and how inescapable it is becoming. 

“Of Course You Do, You’re 12”

This one is more of a meme than a piece of slang, but the phrase went viral nonetheless. In September 2025, Bluesky user Patrick Cosmos (known as @veryimportant.lawyer) posted that they were “working on a new unified theory of american reality i’m calling “everyone is twelve now” [sic]. His post was meant as a reaction to the kind of simplistic, short-sighted, and knee-jerk opinions and actions that have characterized life both online and in the real world in the mid-2020s.

“I’m strong and I want to have like fifty kids and a farm,” he replied by means of an example, adding, “of course you do. You’re twelve.”

“Maybe if there’s a crime we should just send the army,” he continued, “bless your heart my twelve year old buddy.” The post quickly became a meme, and the “everyone is twelve” theory soon slipped into online parlance—while “of course you do, you’re 12” became a slangy reply intended to call out the inherent childishness or small-mindedness of people’s comments or actions. 

Sigma

The era of the alpha male is over; the mid-2020s have become the era of the sigma. Originally meant as a word for an effortlessly cool and independently successful man (who, it is implied, does not need or crave the kudos of leadership that supposedly comes with being an alpha), the positive connotations of being a sigma male took one step further in 2025, when the word sigma itself emerged as a general positive term, essentially meaning “extremely good.” 

Chud

In the 1984 science fiction movie C. H. U. D., the word “chud” stands for “cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers”—a breed of mysterious, bloodthirsty monsters in the film that reside below the streets and in the sewers of New York.

Back in the 1980s, the film went on to inspire an adjective, chud, that came to be used of anything similarly unpleasant or repellent—and now, the term has fallen into further use in the mid-2020s as a more general term of disparagement referring to a foolish, boorish, or just generally unpleasant person.

Almond Mom

In a now-famous 2013 clip from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Yolanda Hadid advised her supermodel daughter Gigi to “have two almonds” after she complained of feeling weak while on a strict diet. The clip then went viral in the early 2020s, and has since inspired the term almond mom as a byword for the kind of image-obsessed mother who closely polices her daughter’s diet—as well as the whole aesthetic associated with this kind of character. 

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