Last week, the American Dialect Society declared “slop” its word of the year. In a news release, the society noted that while the term “slop” could stand on its own as a descriptor for the output of artificial intelligence, it was also “a productive combining form,” which is to say that it could make up part of another word or phrase. See: “workslop,” “fast fashion slop” and the general “sloppification” of everything around us. Kelly Wright, the data czar of the society’s New Words Committee, saw in “slop” a world of possibility: “This productivity has no end in sight.” Of course, it would be odd to think of productivity as a passive state; the general definition of the word couldn’t be more active. To be productive is to get things done, and quickly. Multitasking! Time management! To-do lists! Far from existing in a state of endless possibility, our version of productivity relies on having clear ends and getting to them, lest the possibilities in our email inboxes pile up to 1,221. To be fair, some things are standard lifestyle hygiene: The laundry needs doing, so we do it. The problem is a sort of “productivity creep,” where everything suddenly has to be worth doing. It’s not just self-help books telling us to find purpose(s). Even hobbies have been replaced with more goal-oriented “leisure crafting,” with experts offering advice on how to turn relaxation into homework: “Like to run? Train for a race. Enjoy reading? Aim to read a certain number of books by the end of the year.” In a way, these two forms of productivity — linguistic and laic — are both infinite. But while the idea that we might never run out of new words is thrilling, the notion of an unending to-do list is awful. We could all stand to take a page from Jenny Odell’s book “How to Do Nothing,” which offers resistance to the attention economy by suggesting that we engage in activities without giving a thought to whether they are productive. Walk without a destination in mind, etc. I am certainly guilty of trying to optimize my own relaxation, especially by telling myself that I have to play all of my daily games — currently Connections, Strands, the Crossword, Wordle and Pips — before I can move on with my day. (The games themselves also feel oddly productive, because I come out smarter on the other side.) The A.D.S. was not the only group to select “slop” as its word of the year. Merriam-Webster did the same but opted to highlight the term’s value through its metaphor, pointing out that “slop oozes into everything.” This feels like the best way to think about the productivity of “slop.” It’s a word that, like the concept it stands for, can ooze endlessly into language. The question, on both counts, is whether we should let it. Solve the Midi
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