The term “mogging”, popularized on social networks and meaning to eclipse someone, mainly in terms of appearance, was named word of the year 2026 on Tuesday by the British dictionary Collins. According to this dictionary, mogging means “the act of overshadowing or surpassing someone or something.”
It is reputed to come from the acronym AMOG (Alpha male of the group), which appeared around 2016 and was associated with bodybuilding culture, then adopted by masculinist circles. The term is now used more widely by younger generations jokingly to describe someone considered more attractive, more fashionable or cooler than someone else.
Its use saw an increase of 210% in 2026, indicates in a press release the Collins dictionary, which monitors linguistic uses on social networks and in the media.
“Carspreading”, “ghost jobs”, “firewave”…
“This is a great example of how Generation Z (born between the late 1990s and 2010) and Generation Alpha (born after 2010) have adopted a word, which has become a humorous slang term, by appropriating the language and ‘mogging’ us,” CEO Alex Beecroft said in a statement.
Did you know the term “mogging”?
Among the notable words this year were “carspreading” – the fact, for manufacturers, of manufacturing larger and larger vehicles with each new model –, and “ghost jobs”, job offers published without any real intention of hiring or corresponding to a position already filled, illustrating the frustrations linked to the job market.
Or “firewave”, a series of forest fires spreading over a short period of time. The word of last year was “vibe coding,” the act of using artificial intelligence to write code based on natural language instructions.
