Word.ws English Dictionary

brainrot

brainrot is the alternative form of brain rot.

Meaning of brain rot

Noun

brain rot (uncountable)

  1. (derogatory) The degradation of mental faculties, intelligence, common sense, or moral character.
    • While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?1854 August 9, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, “Conclusion”, in Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 348
  2. (derogatory, slang) Any form of media content that is deemed to hold little artistic value or negatively impact those who consume it.
    • […] I remember that I had to stay home and receive a stern lecture on the evils of Tinseltown brainrot.1978, Lionel Menuhin Rolfe, The Menuhins: A Family Odyssey, page 47
  3. (slang, derogatory or self-deprecatory) The state of being obsessed with a particular work of media, particularly to an extent considered to be embarrassing.
    • Jojo^([sic]) brain rot is real because why have I just spent the last 10 minutes thinking who'd be better at parallel parking-2024 July 8, LeiaThompson3, Twitter

Origin of brainrot

From brain + rot.

Words formed from brainrot

Questions about brainrot

What is brainrot the alternative form of?
Brainrot is the alternative form of brain rot.

Words near brainrot in the dictionary

  1. brainordinates
  2. brainpan
  3. brainpans
  4. brainpower
  5. brainpowers
  6. brainrot
  7. brainrotted
  8. brainrotten
  9. brains
  10. brains trust
  11. brains trusts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: brainrot (page history and authors); brain rot (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-brainrot.wav.

Cite this entry: “brainrot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/brainrot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.