A viral video of a “boat kid” and a dance trend adopted by football star Travis Kelce were the key ingredients that catapulted “aura farming” into the mainstream and onto Collins Dictionary’s 2025 list of notable words. The term, which means to deliberately cultivate a cool persona, is a prime example of how internet culture now shapes the English language.
“Aura farming,” which began in gaming circles, was a relatively niche term. However, it reached a massive new audience this year when the “boat kid” video sparked a viral dance. When celebrities like Travis Kelce performed the dance, the media coverage and social media discussion brought “aura farming” to a global audience.
Lexicographers at Collins, who monitor a 24-billion-word corpus, tracked this explosion in usage and recognized it as one of the year’s key social terms. It was joined on the list by “glaze,” another social media term for excessive and undeserved praise.
While “aura farming” captured the social zeitgeist, the 2025 Word of the Year was “vibe coding.” This AI-related term, for using natural language to create code, was chosen as the year’s most significant linguistic development.
The 2025 list demonstrates the twin engines of language change: “vibe coding” and “broligarchy” represent the top-down influence of the tech industry, while “aura farming” shows the bottom-up power of social media and viral trends.