The unrequited loves of fandoms: Cambridge Dictionary names ‘Parasocial’ word of 2025

Who saw this coming? Cambridge Dictionary has named Parasocial as the Word of the Year for 2025. It defines the term as “involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series, etc, or an artificial intelligence.

- Rachel Lopez

The word itself is not new. It's been around since 1956, though it was coined for people's relationship with a different kind of screen. American sociologists used it to describe TV viewers’ increased interest with/in onscreen personalities. But Parasocial stayed comfortably in the realm of academia all this time. “It’s only fairly recently that it’s made a shift into popular language and it’s one of those words that have been influenced by social media,” says the dictionary’s chief editor Colin McIntosh.