Cambridge Dictionary Updates With Slang Every Washingtonian Needs to Know

The increasing use of TikTok trends and social media terms in everyday conversation has forced the Cambridge Dictionary to throw up its hands and officially add “skibidi,” “delulu” and “tradwife” to its online edition. That’s right: the same book that once taught you the difference between “affect” and “effect” now has to explain “delulu with no solulu.” Welcome to English, 2025 edition. 

What Does Skibidi Mean?

For anyone not terminally online, the dictionary’s example sentences read like word salad assembled by a teenager with unlimited Wi-Fi. Take gems such as, “That wasn’t very skibidi rizz of you” or, “As Gen Z say, I’ve entered my delulu era.” Translation: If it’s too loud, or in this case, makes no freakin’ sense, you are officially too old for this party. 

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Cambridge defines skibidi as “a word that can have different meanings such as ‘cool’ or ‘bad,’ or can be used with no real meaning as a joke.” In other words, it’s basically the shrug emoji in word form. Delulu is a cutesy shortcut for “delusional,” meaning you believe things that aren’t real—like catching up on your email or the tooth fairy. 

If you’re wondering where “skibidi” came from (besides your nightmares), it was coined in Skibidi Toilet, a viral YouTube series in which human heads pop out of toilets and make noises. Yes, that’s a real cultural artifact, filed somewhere between Chia Pets and fidget spinners in humanity’s Museum of Questionable Obsessions. Yes, it’s wildly popular. And yes, this is how words get into the dictionary now. 

How Delulu Went Mainstream

Meanwhile, delulu began about a decade ago as a jab at obsessive K-pop fans, but it’s since gone mainstream. Its true coronation happened when Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese—who probably thought TikTok was a type of watch—actually said in Parliament: “They are delulu with no solulu.” Somewhere, Shakespeare wept. 

“It’s not every day you get to see words like skibidi and delulu make their way into the Cambridge Dictionary,” said Colin McIntosh, the dictionary’s lexical program manager, sounding just a little too excited about babysitting Gen Z’s vocabulary. 

Other New Words in 2025

Other additions include tradwife—short for “traditional wife,” aka influencers who post cottagecore homemaking videos while pretending the 1950s were fun for women—and broligarchy, a Frankenstein word for “bro + oligarchy,” inspired by tech billionaires at Trump’s inauguration. If that doesn’t make you want to slam your head into a thesaurus, nothing will. 

Old Words, New Meanings

Language isn’t just adding shiny new toys—it’s also bending old ones. Snackable, once about Doritos, now means bite-sized digital content. And the dating-world staples red flag and green flag are no longer about sports or semaphore but about whether your Hinge date calls their mom too much—or not enough. 

So yes, the dictionary is keeping up with the internet. The real question is: can you? Or are you already lost in your boomer ‘clueless is bliss’ era — or just Gen X-ing it with peak ‘whatever’ energy?”