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If you felt more excited for Taylor Swift’s engagement announcement earlier this year than you did for your friend or family member’s, you might relate to Cambridge Dictionary’s word of 2025.
“Parasocial” earned the title, Cambridge announced today, thanks to some high-profile uses and the rise of digital communications and AI technology that make these kinds of connections easier to form.
The adjective describes a one-sided connection that a person has with someone they do not know — such as a celebrity or an influencer, a fictional character in a book or an AI chatbot.
“Millions of people are engaged in parasocial relationships; many more are simply intrigued by their rise,” said Colin McIntosh, editor of the Cambridge Dictionary.
“The data reflects that, with the Cambridge Dictionary website seeing spikes in lookups for ‘parasocial.’”
From Taylor Swift to IShowSpeed
Searches for the word spiked in June when streamer IShowSpeed seemingly blocked a fan who made a long thread of emotional posts addressed to the streamer and called themselves IShowSpeed’s “No. 1 parasocial.”
News of Taylor Swift’s engagement to football star Travis Kelce via an Instagram post also ignited strong feelings for the pop star’s big moment, which led some to call the relationship between Swift and her fans parasocial.
The use of AI chatbots as friends, confidantes or even for romantic connection also sparked conversation in the summer about people’s reliance on algorithms for connection and led the dictionary to update its definition of the word to involve AI companions.
Veronica Lamarche, a psychologist and senior lecturer at the University of Essex who has studied parasocial relationships in her work, says it’s interesting to see the word get its “day in the sun,” even though the kind of relationship it describes isn’t necessarily new.
The term was coined in the 1950s by sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, who sought to describe the perceived relationships TV-watchers formed with on-screen personalities. But Cambridge puts the beginning of these kinds of relationships even further back, identifying the first parasocial relationship as the one many fans had with Lord Byron, the British poet and satirist viewed as one of the first true celebrities.
Where does fandom stop and parasocial start?
Lamarche says the examples of parasocial relationships with stars such as Swift or Lily Allen, another pop singer who released a detailed album about her divorce from actor David Harbour in October, help illustrate the difference between being interested in a celebrity and a true parasocial relationship.
Beyond simply being interested in the lives of celebrities, parasocial relationships make people feel like they’re actually part of that person’s world and their experiences.
“Just like you would feel excited for a friend who’s going through an engagement or really angry on behalf of a friend who’s going through a messy breakup, you know, you’re feeling this on behalf of the person that you’ve never met,” she said.
The University of British Columbia’s third edition of the Dictionary of Canadianism has added 137 new terms just in time for Canada Day.
While parasocial relationships are often viewed negatively, Lamarche says they can actually play an important role in our social lives.
Parasocial bonds can be used to augment our social lives, she says — for example, as a means of finding connection when friends or family members are unavailable or when we’re experiencing a period of particular loneliness.
“The only important thing is to remember that they don’t fully replace our close relationships,” Lamarche said.
Runners-up
Runners-up for Cambridge’s word of the year were “pseudonymization” (which describes the process in which information is codified by turning something like a name or an address into a number in order to protect personal information) and “memeify” (turning an event, a person, a picture or something else into an internet joke).
Earlier this year, dictionary.com dubbed “6-7” its word of the year. It can be used to say “so-so” or “maybe this, maybe that,” but also often means nothing at all — and has caught on with school-aged kids, much to the dismay of their parents and teachers.
