Oxford University
Peace named Oxford Children’s Word of the Year for 2025
Young people from across the UK have voted for peace as the Oxford Children’s Word of the Year for 2025.
For more than a decade, our experts and academic researchers have tracked and analysed the evolution of children’s language and how it is used to reflect their emotions and experiences each year.
In 2025, we surveyed opinions from almost 5,000 children across the UK aged 6-14 years old. Based on the most common responses and themes, we shortlisted three words—peace, AI, and resilience—and asked young people to vote for their preferred winning word.
In the final results, peace came out on top with 35% of the vote, narrowly followed by AI (33%), whilst 21% opted for resilience.
Peace chosen in response to global conflicts
Our research highlighted children’s awareness of current affairs. When asked why they chose peace, one in ten children mentioned ‘war’, whilst some highlighted specific conflicts such as ‘Ukraine’ or ‘Gaza’. Words such as ‘need’, ‘want’, and ‘should’ were frequently mentioned in their answers when calling for peace across the world.
A study of the Oxford Children’s Corpus—the world’s largest database of writing by and for children in the English language containing over half a billion words—reveals mentions of peace in children’s stories submitted to the BBC 500 Words competition has increased by 60% since 2015.
AI selected as runner-up for the second year in a row
For the second year running, children selected AI as the runner-up. When asked why they chose the word, a fifth of children (20%) mentioned ‘hearing’ and ‘talking’ about AI, highlighting its ubiquitousness in daily life.
Similar to last year, when asked how the word made them feel, children gave positive responses, with more than one in ten using the adjective ‘excited’ or ‘exciting’. More than a quarter of six-to-eight-year-olds (29%) chose AI as their word of the year, demonstrating how even very young children are aware of the everyday role AI plays.
Six-seven gives children social currency
We also asked young people to choose their slang word of the year. Almost half (47%) of children chose six-seven as their slang word of the year, followed by aura (24%) and delulu (7%).
Our research revealed that the use of six-seven among children fosters inclusivity and social currency, with almost one in ten mentioning ‘friends’ when asked how they use the term, with more than a quarter (28%) citing ‘fun’ and ‘laugh’ when asked what six-seven meant to them.
While 12% of children admitted six-seven had no meaning, most children highlighted the value of such words, with 72% of children stating it was important to have words they only use with friends.
Andrea Quincey
Director of Early Years and Primary Publishing
“A key theme we see from our Oxford Children’s Word of the Year research is just how attuned children are to current affairs. This year is no different; whether that’s calling for peace in response to current conflicts or highlighting how AI has permeated daily life. Perhaps it’s no surprise that six-seven is voted, overwhelmingly, as their slang word of the year. A word which brings them laughter and joy and connection with friends. We see how important it is for children to have agency over their language away from the grown-up world and share words that adults can’t understand.”
Supporting the National Year of Reading by fostering a love of words
We are calling for schools in the UK to participate in the next Oxford Children’s Word of the Year to further support children’s reading, vocabulary development, and oracy skills. We have developed an activity pack with tips and resources for schools that want to take part, including how ‘word of the year’ conversation sessions can encourage book talk and language development. More details on how schools can get involved can be found here.
To mark the announcement, and to support the National Year of Reading 2026, we are collaborating with the National Literacy Trust on school events across the UK. The author-led events will encourage children to engage with different forms of reading and reflect on the words they read, speak, and learn about.
Jonathan Douglas CBE, Chief Executive of the National Literacy Trust, said: “Language plays a profound role in shaping our society, culture and identity. Understanding how children and young people make sense of the words they encounter in their daily lives, take ownership of them and play with their meaning, demonstrates the power of language for helping us comprehend the world around us and our place in it.
“The National Year of Reading will enable us to give more children and young people new opportunities to experience language in ways that are fun, relevant and help them connect with others. Throughout the year, we will work with Oxford University Press and a number of incredible authors to bring the magic of reading and words to life for children and young people across the UK.”
You can read the full details of our research in the Oxford Children’s Word of the Year 2025 report here.
We have been recognised with two awards at the 2026 Society of Scholarly Publishing (SSP) EPIC Awards Celebration, held on 28 May in California.
Oxford Law Pro, our knowledge resource for legal professionals and researchers, has won Gold in two categories: Hosting Platform Features and Branding.
The Excellence in Publishing, Information Technology, & Communications (EPIC) Awards celebrate the remarkable achievements of individuals and teams who are advancing scholarly publishing through creativity, collaboration, and innovation. The Hosting Platform Features category highlights technical innovations that improve how scholarly content is hosted, accessed, and experienced, while the Branding category recognizes outstanding efforts to build and maintain a strong brand identity in scholarly publishing.
Mirkka Jokelainen, Product Portfolio Manager, said:
“It’s incredibly rewarding to see Oxford Law Pro recognised across both platform innovation and branding. These awards reflect the collaboration and commitment of colleagues across OUP and our work with Silverchair and Baxter & Bailey. Our shared focus was to deliver real value to legal researchers and professionals.From the AI Research Assistant through to the product’s identity and positioning, the goal was to create something that is both highly functional and clearly signals what is unique about what OUP can offer. The SSP EPIC Gold Awards celebrate this work.”
About the platform
Launched last year, Oxford Law Pro brings together more than 9,000 journal articles and over 600 award-winning, peer-reviewed books from our portfolio of authoritative and timely legal analysis, all on our Oxford Academic platform.
Oxford Law Pro is powered by a conversational AI research assistant, developed with Silverchair, making legal research more efficient without compromising on accuracy. Unlike generic AI search tools, Oxford Law Pro employs retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) frameworks specifically tuned for legal content, ensuring responses are grounded exclusively in OUP’s authoritative materials.
The platform equips legal professionals with tools that match the realities of modern practice, and by reducing time spent on initial source identification, the AI assistant allows them to allocate more time to substantive analysis, strategic thinking, and client service.
For many years, we have served the academic market with legal research materials, developing a reputation for publishing the highest quality research from globally respected authors. Oxford Law Pro delivers this content in a way that’s designed for legal professionals’ needs. Backed by our research and workshops, a process supported by legal technology expert Jenifer Swallow, we developed product branding and messaging to both reflect our established reputation and resonate with practitioners who may not have encountered OUP before.
We worked with design agency Baxter & Bailey to develop a strong, modern visual identity, messaging, and a suite of imagery to bring Oxford Law Pro alive. Congratulations to all involved for this industry recognition.
Find out more about Oxford Law Pro.
More than 2,000 primary schools and education non-profit organizations (NPOs) across South Africa will receive new mobile trolley library resources in 2026 as the AVBOB Road to Literacy campaign expands to its largest scale yet, introducing braille-inclusive trolley libraries for the first time.
Announced at a Johannesburg event attended by Minister of Basic Education Siviwe Gwarube, the initiative will deliver 2,000 trolley libraries to under-resourced primary schools and NPOs nationwide. Each mobile trolley contains 500 Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) aligned books, bringing the total number of books distributed this year to one million. The campaign continues to prioritize communities with limited access to quality reading materials.
The AVBOB Road to Literacy campaign was launched in partnership with OUP Southern Africa in 2022 to help address South Africa’s literacy challenges by providing primary schools and education NPOs with mobile classroom libraries filled with CAPS-aligned books. The initiative focuses on the Foundation and Intermediate Phases and is designed to give learners more regular access to age-appropriate reading materials that supports literacy and numeracy.
A major development in 2026 is the introduction of 10 braille-inclusive trolley libraries for selected schools and organizations that support blind and partially sighted learners, bringing the total number of trolley libraries to 2,010. Each of the braille trolleys contain more than 100 braille anthologies and 350 sighted Aweh! readers, and make it possible for blind, partially sighted, and sighted children to engage with the same stories.
Karen Simpson
Managing Director of OUP Southern Africa
“The need for books that children can see themselves in, and access in ways that are meaningful for them, has never been clearer. Bringing braille into Road to Literacy for the first time is an important step forward. It allows more learners to experience the joy of story, language, and learning, while creating opportunities for shared reading across classrooms and communities.”
From 2022, to 2026, the AVBOB Road to Literacy campaign has donated 3,893 trolley libraries and distributed approximately two million books, reaching just under 4,000 beneficiary schools and education NPOs. With the 2026 rollout now donating braille libraries, the initiative continues to grow in scale while widening the kinds of learners it can reach.
Minister of Basic Education Siviwe Gwarube noted: “Partnerships with business can go a long way towards improving educational outcomes in the country. AVBOB has been an incredible partner to the education sector, and their trolley libraries are bridging the literacy gap in under-resourced schools. The inclusion of braille books in this year’s trolley libraries will ensure that even learners with visual impairments are not left behind in the literacy journey. Access to knowledge and the joy of reading must extend to every child, regardless of their circumstance. We must work collaboratively as business, government, and society to build a just and equitable education system.”
Nakedi Pilane, Executive Director: Business Development and Financial Services at AVBOB, said: “The increasing demand for trolley libraries has been one of the clearest indicators of the initiative’s value. Schools that initially received a single trolley now request additional resources to support the momentum they see in their learners. Teachers tell us about classrooms that feel more energized, about learners who look forward to reading time, and about children who are discovering language as an avenue to curiosity and self-expression. These shifts may appear modest, but in educational terms, they represent meaningful, long-term progress. When reading begins to take root, a community begins to unlock its potential.”
You can watch a recap of the 2026 recipient announcement ceremony here.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a historical dictionary, containing over 500,000 entries and 3.5 million quotations to capture over 1,000 years of English. We update the OED every quarter, revising versions of existing entries as well as defining new words and senses, all subtly broadening our understanding of the English language.
10 highlights from this quarter’s update
1. This update contains more than 500 new words, phrases, and senses, including doomscrolling and to touch grass. The OED Executive Editor, Craig Leyland, shares more about the words added this quarter in our new words notes.
2. With more than 950 revised senses, we’ve updated the entries relating to various major word families, such as bounce, heal, and drop. Word groups such as these are fundamental, wide-ranging, and productive elements of English. Through the centuries they appear in new contexts, in new locations, and are adapted by people to fit their changing circumstances. For example, we now show that people have talked of bouncing babies on their knees since at least 1836, of healing gardens since 1707, and of drop nets being used by fishermen since 1695.
3. Our entry for charismatic shows a new sense, where it’s used to designate animals as particularly appealing to humans, and therefore popular with conservation causes that use them to gain support.
4. OED editor, Jeffrey Sherwood, uncovers the history of the word snob, which originally meant almost the opposite of what it means today.
5. We also recognize jelly as an adjective to cover a more recent use meaning ‘jealous’.
6. As part of our World English programme, this release sees additions from Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, and Ireland. Find out more in our release notes by OED Executive Editor, Danica Salazar.
7. In Malaysian and Singaporean English, agak-agak denotes guesswork or estimation, and is most frequently used in the context of a particular way of cooking, in which ingredients are added based on estimation and intuition rather than accurate measurement.
8. The Hong Kong pastry, pineapple bun, does not contain pineapple, but its cracked, baked topping resembles the skin of this fruit. Meanwhile, a boodle fight is a communal meal at which different kinds of food are laid out, typically on banana leaves, and eaten with the hands.
9. Ah sure look or ah sure look it, dating to 2011 and 1986 respectively, is a colloquial phrase used by Irish people to introduce or emphasize a statement, or to express resignation or acceptance of a situation.
10. We are now providing multiple audio pronunciations for some British and U.S. transcriptions. Find out more in this commentary from Holly Dann, pronunciation editor.
Explore the update in more depth here.
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