New words for the dictionary - 15th September 2025

The updated Cambridge Dictionary includes 6,000 new words. A number of these are used on social media.

'Skibidi' is one new entry from social media. The dictionary describes this as 'cool' or 'bad'. But in sentences like, "What the skibidi are you doing?", there's no meaning.

Skibidi comes from an animation series on YouTube. In the animation, which is called Skibidi Toilet, heads come out of a toilet!

Colin McIntosh, who works for Cambridge Dictionary, says, "Internet culture is changing English language". In his opinion, it's exciting. The dictionary can record these changes.

But some people, like US writer and artist Lee Escobeda, are against words like skibidi. He thinks younger people are making the language meaningless.

McIntosh explains how new words are chosen. The dictionary hopes that they will stay around. People have used the new entry 'tradwife' since 2020. It's a stay-at-home mum who usually posts about her life on social media. And 'delulu' comes from delusional. This means someone is choosing to believe things which aren't true.

Recently, a top search on TikTok's been "delulu is the solulu". It means that if you think positively, you can be whatever you want.

But do words like this need to be added?