Technology vocabulary evolves rapidly, as highlighted by new language additions like p(doom), mogging, friendslop, and ghost jobs from the Scotland-based Collins dictionary. With vibe-coding and enshittification also capturing recent attention as words of the year, popular tech terms continuously shift. Evaluating terms that have staying power alongside those that have disappeared helps track this linguistic evolution.
Five Tech Terms That Survived
The selfie has become a permanent part of daily life, originating in 2002 on an Australian internet chat forum before entering the mainstream in 2013 to describe a self-shot photo using a camera-enabled device. Content creators and influencers share information across digital platforms to build audiences, while the term parasocial describes the one-sided relationships viewers feel toward them.
The Oxford Dictionary named podcast the Word of the Year in 2005. The term combines iPod and broadcast to describe on-demand digital audio programs, maintaining relevance even though Apple discontinued the iPod in 2022. Working from home, or WFH, surged during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, with a 2022 US Bureau of Labor Statistics survey showing that 23% of Americans work remotely.
Facebook popularized the term unfriend, chosen as the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year in 2009. However, NPR noted the word dates back to the 17th century with the same meaning of ending a friendship.
The Terms That Got Away
The metaverse, including Mark Zuckerberg’s virtual reality project and Horizon Worlds announced in 2021, faded after years of heavy investment as attention shifted to artificial intelligence. Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, experienced a massive boom in popularity and subsequent value crashes, causing the term to largely exit public consciousness after moments like President Donald Trump releasing his own digital tokens.
The World Wide Web, once a primary descriptor for the internet, is rarely used today. Defragmenting hard drives, or defragging, was once a common method to improve Windows computer performance, but the practice has disappeared from modern daily routines.
Emoticons created from standard keyboard characters like sideways smiley faces have largely been replaced by graphical emojis. Modern communication programs often automatically convert typed emoticons into emojis, making the older term obsolete.
Tesla announced plans to end Cybertruck production in 2027.
