Mogging sees 210% usage spike as Collins picks 2026 word

Collins Dictionary selected mogging as its Word of the Year for 2026 on Monday.

The lexicographer reported a 210% increase in the word's usage during the current year.

Collins defines mogging as the act of outshining or outperforming someone or something.

The dictionary noted that Gen Z and Gen Alpha users apply the term in a playful and ironic manner when one person upstages another.

The term most commonly describes physical appearance.

For instance, a person at a gathering might tell a friend that they are mogging everyone in the room to indicate that the friend looks exceptionally attractive.

Alex Beecroft, Managing Director at Collins, stated that the word demonstrates how younger generations adopt terms and transform them into humorous slang.

He added that this process allows these groups to make the language their own while effectively outperforming older speakers.

The term has roots that predate its recent viral success.

Tony Thorne, director of the slang and new language archive at King's College, told Metro that the word began circulating online in the 2010s.

Thorne explained that the term derives from the acronym AMOG, which stands for Alpha Male of Group.

Originally, the language was generated by the incel community and used by men focused on proving physical dominance and masculinity through their looks and sexual prowess to others in a group setting, according to Thorne's account of the term's history with Metro reporters, which placed it in the same linguistic universe as looksmaxxing, a TikTok trend involving enhancing physical attractiveness to gain sexual attention, where human worth is reduced to algorithmic facial scores and dangerous methods are promoted for personal enhancement, such as frame mogging, wherein an individual's frame makes another look structurally inferior, while increased screen time and constant social media exposure during the pandemic helped appearance-based trends grow faster, as noted by Thorne, who also observed that by 2024, Gen Alpha, Gen Z, and younger millennials were regularly using the term in memes, reaction posts, and livestream video clips, although the term is not limited to looks, with other popular uses including lifemogging, which involves creating and leading a more impressive life compared to others, as well as heightmogging, stylemogging, and carmogging, despite recognizing its roots in what Thorne described as toxic subcultures, he emphasized that the term has moved well beyond its origins, and many people who use it now understand it and laugh at it, using it ironically, while Thorne said he sympathizes with those who see the spread of the term and its many elaborations as validating toxic rhetoric, but he does not think this is the case when many users, especially younger ones, are not familiar with or do not care about its origins, concluding that it is a very conflicted and problematic niche term that has been purged and repurposed for lighthearted viral and interpersonal usage, as Collins also released a list of new and notable words for 2026, which included bixie, a hairstyle shorter than a bob but longer than a pixie cut, carspreading, the tendency of manufacturers to build cars that are longer, wider, and heavier, firewave, a series of urban wildfires in a short space of time, fricy, a food adjective meaning both fruity and spicy, friendslop, a low-budget video game designed for casual play with friends, ghost job, a job advertised by an employer with no intention of appointing anyone, hydration break, a pause in a sporting contest to drink fluids, Manchesterism, a political philosophy associated with Andy Burnham involving devolution of power to regions, and P(doom), an estimation of the probability that AI will bring about the collapse of human civilization.