'Vespreig' chosen as new Catalan word of the year

The 2025 new Catalan word of the year is 'vespreig', the noun referring to the general social activity of going out in the evening time with friends and colleagues to bars, terraces, or other social spaces, to enjoy food, drinks, music, and conversation. 

Neologists, professionals who come up with new words and expressions, or new meanings for old words and expressions, proposed ten terms as candidates, and 'vespreig' was chosen with 25.6% of the votes. 

The Observatory of Neology of the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), with the Philological Section of the Institute of Catalan Studies, TERMCAT and 3cat, with its linguistic portal ésAdir, made public the results of the Word of the Year campaign on Wednesday.

This edition saw the highest number of votes cast since the first campaign in 2014. A total of 15,513 people voted for one of the 10 candidates for 'neologism of the year'.

Coming second was 'IA', the Catalan acronym for 'artificial intelligence', while third was 'neurodivergent'.

The top ten was as follows: 

1 'vespreig' (25.6% of votes)
2 'IA' (22.5%)
3 'neurodivergent' (11.8%)
4 'salut mental' - mental health (11.4%)
5 'gazià' / 'gaziana' - a person from Gaza (male/female) (9.4%)
6 'matxa' - matcha (7.8%)
7 'queer' (4.6%)
8 'crisi climàtica' - climate crisis (3.8%)
9 'influenciador' / 'influenciadora' - influencer (male/female) (1.7%)
10 'dejuni intermitent' - intermittent fasting (1.3%)

The Institute of Catalan Studies is now studying ways of incorporating the winning term, 'vespreig', into the normative dictionary. 

This campaign, which began 11 years ago, aims to promote the interest and participation of citizens in relation to the Catalan language and its evolution, and to take into account their points of view.

The winning words in past editions have been the following: 'estelada' (2014), referring to the Catalan pro-independence flag, dron (2015), meaning drone, vegà/vegana (2016), vegan, casolada (2017), a form of protest where people bang pots and pans from their homes, sororitat (2018), sorority, emergencia climatica i animalista (2019), climate and animalist emergency, coronavirus (2020), negacionisme (2021), denialism, birra (2022), beer, viralizar i tiet/tieta (2023), to go viral, and uncle/aunt, and dana (2024), referring to a type of storm.