The first recorded use of “brain rot,” according to Oxford University Press, was in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, published in 1854. “While England endeavours to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?” wrote Thoreau in his treatise on transcendentalism.

Brain rot” is the 2024 Oxford Word of the Year, adding to a growing list of Internet-specific words that are chosen by dictionaries as words of the year.

A slang term for supposed mental damage done by overconsumption of trivial online content triumphed over a shortlist that also included “lore,” “demure” and “slop.”