“Apagão” was chosen as the Word of the Year 2025 by almost half of the participants in the initiative promoted by Porto Editora, it was announced this Wednesday, December 3rd.
“Apagão” gathered 41.5% of the “thousands of votes”, “reflecting the impact that the failure of the electricity supply had on people’s lives, leaving them without access to transport, communications and basic services”said Porto Editora, in a statement released today, without specifying the number of voters.
In this year’s edition of Word of the Year, a new feature was launched, which allowed voters to justify their choice. “This word stood out as a ‘historical event’ and ‘most memorable moment of the year’, which combined ‘uncertainty and distress’ with ‘life lesson’ and ‘possibility of disconnecting’”added the publisher.
The ‘top’ 3 of the most voted words of 2025 include “immigration”, with 22.2% of the votes, and “flotilla”, with 8%.
The list of finalist words also included “Agent (IA)” (6.4%), “fires” (5.5%), “elections” (5.3%), “perception” (4.3%), “elevator” (4%), “tarefer” (1.9%) and “moderate” (0.9%).
Voting took place between November 3rd and 30th, via the website www.palavradoano.pt.
The list of ten finalist words, “which portray the themes and events that marked collective life throughout 2025”, was drawn up based on more than 6,500 words submitted by users of the Word of the Year website, on the most searched words in Infopédia’s Portuguese language dictionary and “on the continuous work of observing the Portuguese language in the media and social networks”.
Last year, when the 50th anniversary of April 25th was marked, the most voted word was “Freedom”.
In previous editions, the words chosen were “teacher” (2023), “war” (2022), “vaccine” (2021), “saudade” (2020), “domestic violence” (2019), “nurse” (2018), “fires” (2017), “geringonça” (2016), “refugee” (2015), “corruption” (2014), “fireman” (2013), “entroikado” (2012), “austerity” (2011), “vuvuzela” (2010) and “esmiuçar” (2009).