Overview
- Andrej Karpathy introduced the phrase in a February post on X, popularizing a shorthand for prompting AI to produce software.
- Collins classifies the entry as a noun and labels it slang, formalizing its place in the lexicon.
- Lexicographers say the choice followed a large spike in citations tracked across the Collins Corpus since the term first appeared this year.
- Industry momentum accompanies the linguistic milestone, with Lovable raising $200 million, Replit $250 million, and Vercel $300 million at multibillion-dollar valuations.
- The 2025 Stack Overflow survey reports 84% of developers use or plan to use AI tools and 51% use them daily, yet over three quarters say vibe coding is not part of their professional work.