University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa English Dept. chooses ‘analogue’ as 2025 Hawaiʻi Word of the Year

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of English selected “analogue” as its 2025 Word of the Year for Hawaiʻi.

“Analogue” refers to ways of thinking and creating that depend on human judgment, attention and physical engagement rather than automation.

The department’s choice highlights the enduring value of human-centered thinking, creativity and interpretation in an age of rapidly growing artificial intelligence.

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of English chairman and professor John David Zuern said many of the department’s students welcome opportunities to engage in what might be called “analogue intelligence” — reading printed texts and annotating them by hand, drafting essays on paper, hand-crafting their own books and taking part in oral presentations and performances in class.

They also have reservations about how generative artificial intelligence, or GenAI, will affect the future.

Generative AI is artificial intelligence that can create new content such as text, music, videos and more, even computer code, based on inputs or prompts. It is trained to learn patterns and features from existing data by learning from massive data sets.

“Many of our students are contemplating careers in writing, teaching, the law and other fields involving communication, interpretation, critical thinking and creativity, and they have concerns about the impact of GenAI on their future prospects,” said Zuern in a university release about the Word of the Year choice.

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of English faculty members — along with student leadership of English Majors Association — decided on the word for this year.

“Rather than a retreat into the past, we see this enthusiasm for the analogue as a ‘back to the future’ impulse, a commitment to the skills and values of a liberal education that will remain essential in a world transformed by [artificial intelligence] technologies,” Zuern said.

Merriam-Webster on Dec. 14 announced its 2025 Word of the Year: “slop.”

“Slop” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence,” and Zuern said the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of English sees “analogue” as a counterpoint to “slop.”

The 2025 Hawaiian Word of the Year selected by University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani, College of Hawaiian Language, is “kāhuli” — to change, alter, overturn.

Kāhuli in the Kumulipo — a Hawaiian epic that details the origins of the universe and Hawaiian history — describes the transformation that warmed the earth and unfolded the heavens, catalyzing the formation of the universe itself.