Vibe coding
Saber Conectado, 20 December 2025.
Every year since 2013, the Collins English Dictionary has announced its Word of the Year, based on data from the Collins Corpus, a database of 24 billion words; lexicographers identify emerging words with a significant increase in popularity over the year that reflect social, cultural, or technological changes (Mouriquand, 2025).
Collins English Dictionary officially announced “vibe coding” as the Word of the Year.
Vibe coding definition
Vibe coding (noun)
The use of artificial intelligence prompted by natural language to assist with the writing of computer code. (Collins English Dictionary)
Vibe coding definition. Image from: Collins The Word of the Year 2025.
The Collins English Dictionary (Collins Word of the Year, 2025) states that the term was popularised by Andrej Karpathy, former Director of AI at Tesla and founding engineer at OpenAI, to describe how AI enables creative output while he could “forget that the code even exists”.
According to Alex Beecroft, Collins’ Managing Director (apud Mouriquand, 2025),
The selection of vibe coding as Collins’ word of the year perfectly captures how language is evolving alongside technology. It signals a major shift in software development, where AI is making coding more accessible”. [Beecroft adds that] “The seamless integration of human creativity and machine intelligence demonstrates how natural language is fundamentally changing our interaction with computers.
Vibe coding is more than a technical practice, it represents a broader shift in how humans create, communicate, and collaborate with technology through natural language.
Examples
The following YouTube video by @TechwithLucy illustrates how a person who does not know how to code can write a computer code with AI support only by describing their idea.
Examples in sentences (taken from Reddit, an online discussion platform):
- People who know nothing of coding can vibe code. (Reddit)
- I think by “vibe coding” people mean using AI to write code by a person who does not understand ANY of it (zero understanding is the key). (Reddit)
- And here I am thinking vibe coding is detach yourself from any other task, turn music on in your headphones and code with full focus on code (and probably music), maybe drinking tea/coffee from time to time. (Reddit)
Extra information
William Collins founded the Collins publishing company in 1819 in Glasgow, Scotland. However, the publication of dictionaries did not begin until 1824. The Collins English Dictionary was first published in 1979, and it was much larger than any other dictionary previously produced by Collins. Today, 40 years later, the Collins English Dictionary comprises 13 editions. (Collins English Dictionary)
REFERENCES
COLLINS DICTIONARY, About Collins Dictionaries. Collins, 2025. Accessed 17 Dec. 2025.
COLLINS WORD OF THE YEAR 2025. The Collins Word of the Year 2025 is….Collins, 2025. Accessed 17 Dec. 2025.
Learn to Vibe Code in 10 Minutes (Full Beginners Tutorial). [S. I. : s. n.], 2025. 1 video (10 minutes). Published by the Tech With Lucy channel. Accessed 18 Dec. 2025.
MOURIQUAND, David. ‘Vibe coding’ named Word of the Year by Collins Dictionary. Euro News, 06 November 2025. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025.
