Internet slang “brain rot” has been named Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2024, but did you know it’s not the first internet-inspired word to get the title?

The first recorded use of “brain rot,” according to Oxford University Press, was in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, published in 1854. “While England endeavours to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?” wrote Thoreau in his treatise on transcendentalism.

A slang term for supposed mental damage done by overconsumption of trivial online content triumphed over a shortlist that also included “lore,” “demure” and “slop.”