| 1991 | Mother of all | - | - | - |
| 1992 | Not! | - | - | - |
| 1993 | Information superhighway | - | - | - |
| 1994 | Cyber | - | - | - |
| 1995 | Web | - | - | - |
| 1996 | Mom (as in soccer mom) | - | - | - |
| 1997 | Millennium bug | - | - | - |
| 1998 | E-(as a prefix, e.g., e-mail) | - | - | - |
| 1999 | Y2K | - | - | - |
| 2000 | Chad | - | - | - |
| 2001 | 9-11 | - | - | - |
| 2002 | WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) | - | - | - |
| 2003 | Metrosexual | - | Democracy | - |
| 2004 | Red state, blue state, purple state | Chav | Blog | Chav |
| 2005 | Truthiness | Sudoku | Integrity | Podcast |
| 2006 | Plutoed | Carbon footprint | Truthiness | Carbon Footprint |
| 2007 | Subprime | Locavore | W00t | Climate Change |
| 2008 | Bailout | Hypermiling | Bailout | Credit Crunch |
| 2009 | Tweet | Unfriend | Admonish | Twitter |
| 2010 | App | Refudiate | Austerity | Credit Crunch |
| 2011 | Occupy | Squeezed middle | Pragmatic | Austerity |
| 2012 | Hashtag | Gif | Socialism, capitalism | Marmalade |
| 2013 | Because | Selfie | Science | Geek |
| 2014 | #BlackLivesMatter | Vape | Culture | Photobomb |
| 2015 | They (singular pronoun) | 😂 (Tears of Joy emoji) | -ism | Binge-watch |
| 2016 | Dumpster fire | Post-truth | Surreal | Brexit |
| 2017 | Fake news | Youthquake | Feminism | Fake news |
| 2018 | Tender-age shelter | Toxic | Justice | Single-use |
| 2019 | (My) pronouns | Climate emergency | They (singular pronoun) | Climate Strike |
| 2020 | Covid | No single word | Pandemic | Lockdown |
| 2021 | Insurrection | Vax | Vaccine | NFT |
| 2022 | Useless | Goblin mode | Gaslighting | Permacrisis |
| 2023 | Enshittification | Rizz | Authentic | AI |
