If a friend, a rival or a gadget has left you feeling second-best this year, there is now an official word for it. The lexicographers at Collins have crowned “mogging” the defining term of 2026, defining it as outperforming or outshining someone or something, often by making them seem inferior in looks, confidence or status. The publisher says use of the term rose by 210% over the year, with today’s teenagers and twenty-somethings doing most of the talking.
The word has a rougher past than its playful present suggests. It probably began as an abbreviation, AMOG, standing for the dominant male in a group of men, and surfaced around 2016 in bodybuilding circles as a label for the most physically imposing man in the gym. It then became a verb in the misogynist corners of the internet known as the manosphere. These days, Collins notes, it is mostly used with a wink: a new video game can mog an old favourite, and a friend’s sourdough can mog the loaf you spent the weekend nursing.
For Collins boss Alex Beecroft, the pick demonstrates that every generation stamps its own imprint on English. The dictionary’s team bases its choice on frequency data and on the contexts in which a term keeps turning up. Earlier choices, made annually since 2013, have included permacrisis, AI and brat, while 2025 went to vibe coding. Across the Atlantic, Dictionary.com has gone for the related “maxxing”.
The rest of the shortlist reads like an arms race of excess. “Carspreading” captures vehicles that grow longer and heavier with each model; “firewave” describes clusters of wildfires; and “hydration break” earned its place after drinks pauses featured in every match of the 2026 World Cup. Also listed were “ghost job”, “friendslop” for scrappy multiplayer games, “fricy” for fruity-spicy flavours, the “bixie” haircut, “P(doom)” for the odds of an AI catastrophe, and “Manchesterism”, the regional-growth creed of Andy Burnham, who Collins notes took over Downing Street from Keir Starmer in the summer.
