Existing terminology related to antimicrobial resistance fails to evoke risk perceptions and be remembered.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a serious public health risk. It means that microorganisms, such as bacteria, change in a way that existing medicines, such as antibiotics, no longer kill them. As a result, it may be impossible to treat even common infections. Increasing the public's understanding of AMR could help avoid its development, but to date, awareness campaigns have not been very successful in changing behaviour. Here, we aimed to understand why, by investigating the language used to communicate about AMR. Participants rated how much health risk they associated with different words (i.e., cancer, Ebola, AMR). People generally found it difficult to remember words associated with AMR and did not think they sounded risky compared to other health risk words. Future risk communication might benefit from renaming AMR to better signal the severity of the problem and motivate behaviour change.