Kindness is Oxford Children's Word of the Year for 2024

Posted on Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Category: News

Kindness is Oxford Children's Word of the Year for 2024

More than six in ten children chose kindness as their word of the year, according to research by OUP. Researchers found that the word choice reflected children's awareness of mental health and current affairs.


The research also showed children are cautiously optimistic about AI, with artificial intelligence voted second choice by a quarter of children. Slay was chosen as the top slang word for 2024, followed by sigma and skibidi.

The research involved more than 6,000 children aged 6-14 across the UK, and showed that mental health was a reason for some children selecting kindness, as well as the ongoing global conflicts. Several children mentioned learning about kindness at school or at home, while others noted: At the moment with all the conflict and the issues the world faces, kindness is a good way to go.


Artificial Intelligence embraced


The research also demonstrated children's enthusiasm in embracing AI, with artificial intelligence voted runner-up for Oxford Children's Word of the Year by a quarter of children, with most of them saying that it made them feel 'optimistic' and 'excited'. Meanwhile, one in four children chose slay as their favourite slang word, with sigma and skibidi as runners-up - highlighting how internet & social media continue to shape Gen Alpha's vocabulary.


Publisher OUP will be putting together a 'kindness toolkit' for parents, including recommended reads to develop empathy and kindness, and tips for parents on how to foster kindness at home. 


Read the Oxford Children's Word of the Year 2024 full report.



The Oxford Children's Corpus is the world's largest database of writing by and for children in the English language, containing over half a billion words. The database reveals AI is a keen topic of interest for children who express varying viewpoints on the subject. Analysis, which includes looking at the stories submitted for the BBC 500 WORDS 2024 story competition, shows the phrase 'take over the world' is commonly used in relation to AI, whilst there are also themes around AI machines being empathetic to humans.


Favourite slang words


Children were also asked to choose their favourite slang word, with more than one in four (28 per cent) opting for slay, citing it as a term of approval and expression of support. Whilst slay has appeared on the colloquial shortlist for the past two years, 2024 saw a rise specifically in younger children voting for the word, with a 16 percentage point increase from 2023 among six to eight-year-olds. The terms sigma ('cool' / popular) and skibidi (alternately cool or dumb) were voted as second and third choices respectively, highlighting the influential role social media plays on children's language.


Word of the Year


Andrea Quincey, director Early Years and Primary Publishing, Oxford University Press, said: "It is so encouraging that kindness has been voted - by a considerable majority - as the Oxford Children's Word of the Year for 2024. We know from previous years that young people are very conscious of the big issues that can divide us as a society and attuned to the important role which language can play in bringing people together.


"This choice suggests something more personal: an awareness of mental health issues and of the hidden challenges others may be facing. It tells us that empathy, and tolerance and the language we use matter, and that kindness is not only a solution to so many problems but is something everyone and anyone can do to make a difference.”


For more than a decade, experts and academic researchers at OUP have been tracking Children's Word of the Year, analysing the evolution of children's language and how it is used to reflect their emotions and experiences. 


Previous Oxford Children's Word of the Year


The Children's Word of the Year has reflected the influence and impact of media news stories and important topics of conversation in the grown-up world on young minds and imaginations:


2023 Climate Change
2022 Queen
2021 Anxiety
2020 Coronavirus
2019 Brexit
2018 Plastic
2017 Trump
2016 Refugee
2015 #hashtag
2014 Minion