"Special assets" is the bad word of the year 2025

The term special funds has been present in social discourse for several years. In 2025, it was increasingly used in public-political language and very clearly shaped the political debates on public debt and investment programs. Sondervermögen is made up of the words sonder and Vermögen. Assets means a large amount of property (money, material assets, etc.). The word formation element sonder means that something does not correspond to the usual, but is extraordinary. In everyday language, special assets are understood to mean a special amount of property that is separate from the total assets and has its own status. The term originally comes from economic and legal terminology and is used in the German Basic Law (GG) in Article 110, Paragraph 1. In the specialist discourse on the state budget, special assets refers to a so-called subsidiary budget that is set up to fulfill certain tasks and is associated with the incurrence of debt or a credit authorization. The use of this administrative term has taken on a life of its own in public discourse. It is aimed at all citizens in debates about political measures. However, many of them are not familiar with the special administrative meaning and are guided by the everyday meaning. This discrepancy brings the misleading euphemistic meaning of the word to the fore. The use of technicism in public communication obscures what it actually means: taking on debt.

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The jury criticizes this use because it obscures facts and because of its manipulative effect. This undermines democratic debates about the necessity of taking on debt: Comprehensibility and honesty are avoided with regard to the debt incurred. Where political communication affects all citizens, a linguistically critical call for clarity and appropriateness in language is required in terms of discourse ethics.

In addition, we criticize as a bad word in second place in 2025:

ZustrombegrenzungsgesetzZustrombegrenzungsgesetz is an expression that uses the water metaphor to depict immigration as 'flowing in large quantities' and thus connotes immigration negatively, i.e. as a threat. Terms from the field of water metaphors that refer to migration have been in use since the 1950s (e.g. Flüchtlingsstrom, Asylantenstrom, Flüchtlingsflut, Asylantenwelle, Flutwelle, Asyltsunami etc.). People who are on the run disappear behind the term of a mass material physical process ("influx") and are thus presented as a large number and danger and at the same time dehumanized. The individual fate of migrants is ignored. In the criticized word formation, this discrimination is also institutionalized in the form of a law.

This year, the jury is once again reverting to the category of the guests' personal non-word, which was introduced in 2013.

The personal non-word of this year's guest Ronen Steinke:

ResettlementThe term "resettlement" was used by Israeli and American politicians in 2025 to promote sending the population of the embattled Gaza Strip permanently to another country. What sounds like a good deed conceals a crime. In international law, "resettlement" at gunpoint is commonly referred to as expulsion. And if civilians are given the choice of either being shot at and bombed or "voluntarily" doing what they are "offered", then this is not an offer, but coercion. Some German media also adopted this euphemistic way of speaking.

Unword statistics 2025

The jury received a total of 2631 submissions for the year 2025. A total of 553 expressions were proposed, of which around 70 met the jury's unword criteria. Among the most frequent submissions (at least 10 entries) - not all of which strictly met the criteria - were: Babyboomer (16), firewall (22), deal (215), dirty work (91), fear of peace (582), highly efficient incinerator (22), warlike (42), charging experience (154), special assets (79), cityscape (141), actual (20), technology openness (36), controversial (427), influx limitation law (17).

Further information can be found here.

You can submit suggestions for the Unword of the Year 2026 here.