If you felt a personal connection with a celebrity this year, you likely weren't alone.

That feeling led Cambridge Dictionary to select "parasocial" as its 2025 word of the year. Parasocial is defied as "involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series, etc., or an artificial intelligence."

It's an academic term that has only been around for about 70 years, but it has now become mainstream, said Colin McIntosh, the lexical program manager for Cambridge Dictionary

"Millions of people are engaged in parasocial relationships; many more are simply intrigued by their rise," McIntosh said in a statement. "The data reflects that, with the Cambridge Dictionary website seeing spikes in l

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