Oxford University Press names "brain rot" as its 2024 word of the year in a nod to modern scrolling habits. "The term has taken on new significance in the digital age."

Oxford University Press said the phrase "brain rot" gained "new prominence in 2024," with its frequency of use increasing 230% from the year before.

The first recorded use of “brain rot,” according to Oxford University Press, was in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, published in 1854. “While England endeavours to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?” wrote Thoreau in his treatise on transcendentalism.