Mogging’s the word but the cat need not worry

Born as internet slang, the Collin's Word of the Year has travelled from the gymnasium and male self-improvement subcultures to the mainstream

A dictionary’s “word of the year” is an annual snapshot of collective preoccupations.

2 min readNov 5, 2026 06:15 AM IST First published on: Nov 5, 2026 at 06:15 AM IST

The only Mog one knew for a very long time was Judith Kerr’s beloved fictional moggy, star of a series of popular children’s books spanning well over five decades. But now Mog the cat seems to have been mogged by Collins’s Word of the Year. The British dictionary puts mogging as “outperforming or outshining someone or something”, making them feel small or inadequate. In a year that has given the world plenty to feel abashed over, the choice can hardly be faulted.

Born as internet slang, mogging has travelled from the gymnasium and male self-improvement subcultures to the mainstream. It emerged from AMOG, an abbreviation for “alpha male of the group”, before escaping the gym and the internet’s more testosterone-fuelled enclaves to acquire a wider, frequently ironic, currency. Its ascent captures the zeitgeist of an age in which almost everything, from appearance to achievement, is subjected to unforgiving scrutiny.

A dictionary’s “word of the year” is an annual snapshot of collective preoccupations. It discloses what society finds worth engaging with. This year’s shortlist included “carspreading”, the automotive industry’s enthusiasm for ever larger vehicles, “ghost job”, vacancies advertised without any genuine intention of recruitment, a contemporary form of professional deception, and “P(doom)”, mathematical shorthand for the probability of AI destroying civilisation. Each of these, including “firewave”, a name for a cluster of wildfires, is united by escalation: Bigger cars, hotter climates, more existential technological anxieties and relentless competition for attention. Even being merely good is insufficient unless somebody else can be made to look worse. It’s hard to trump Mog, though. The dictionary notes in a helpful aside that mogging is “not to be confused with your moggy, who has been mogging you from the sofa for years”. That’s some saving grace.