Each year, Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year and short-listed nominees capture pivotal moments in language and culture. These words serve as a linguistic time capsule, reflecting social trends and global events that defined the year. The Word of the Year isn’t just about popular usage; it reveals the stories we tell about ourselves and how we’ve changed over the year. And for these reasons, Dictionary.com’s 2024 Word of the Year is demure.
Why Did We Choose Demure as the Word of the Year?
To select the 2024 Word of the Year, our lexicographers analyzed a large amount of data including newsworthy headlines, trends on social media, search engine results, and more to identify words that made an impact on our conversations, online and in the real world.
The word demure experienced a meteoric rise in usage in 2024. Between January and the end of August, this term saw a nearly 1200% increase in usage in digital web media alone. This sharp rise is mainly attributed to TikToker Jools Lebron’s popularization of the phrase “very demure, very mindful” in a series of videos posted to the platform in early August.
Though the term demure has traditionally been used to describe those who are reserved, quiet, or modest, a new usage has spread through social media — one used to describe refined and sophisticated appearance or behavior in various contexts, such as at work or on a plane. This increased focus on public appearance and behavior comes at a time when employees are increasingly returning to offices after hybrid remote work following the pandemic.
The rise and spread of the term on social media resulted in a similar increase in search interest on Google. Between August 2023 and July 2024, there was no significant trend in the usage of the word demure. By the week of August 18, 2024, however, there was almost 14 times more interest in the term, highlighting the term’s almost overnight explosion in popularity. At the peak of the trend, demure had 200 times more searches on Dictionary.com than it did on dates preceding August.
Other Words on Dictionary.com’s 2024 Word of the Year Shortlist
As our team reviewed the words that stood out in 2024, these words also made an impact and our shortlist for 2024 Word of the Year:
1. Brainrot
Appearing as early as 2004, brainrot refers to the effects of spending too much time consuming low-quality content on social media. The term also refers to the low-quality content itself. Over the past year, the term has received increased usage in the general public as Generation Alpha’s digital habits have begun to attract attention and scrutiny from parents, medical experts, researchers, and the media. In the first half of 2024, brainrot saw a surge of use in digital media of almost 1000% compared to 2023.
- Sometimes brainrot appears as an open compound, brain rot, and our analysis examines the usage of both the open and closed compound combined.
2. Brat
In 2024, a new usage of brat exploded into the mainstream after a three-word tweet by musician Charli XCX: “kamala IS brat.” This tweet, which was published after Kamala Harris was announced as the Democratic presidential nominee, propelled brat from being used mostly in online communities by fans of Charlie XCX and similar artists into mainstream public use. The new usage of brat redefines the word, using it to refer to someone who is confidently rebellious, unapologetically bold, and playfully defiant. Like brainrot, brat has shown around 1000% increase in digital media use compared to 2023 values.
In 2024, extreme weather is not just a scientific term — it’s a part of everyday vocabulary. This year has shown a broad increase in usage. News outlets, social media platforms, and even casual conversations are saturated with discussions of record-breaking temperatures, catastrophic storms, and widespread flooding. The discussion focused on events like Hurricane Helene, the drought in Brazil, flooding in Nigeria, and wildfires in Canada, Portugal, and California. The year 2024 saw a continued increase of the term extreme weather in web searches. In January 2024, for example, extreme weather was searched for 70% more than it was in January 2023.
4. Midwest nice
Although Midwest nice has been around for decades, the term gained widespread attention in 2024 because of the United States presidential election. In August, Vice President Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, generating discussions about Walz’s pleasant personality. Originating in the Midwestern United States, Midwest nice describes a courteous and agreeable manner, often involving self-deprecation, politeness, and avoidance of conflict.
- Midwest nice is often seen as a more general variant of the term Minnesota nice, which has a similar meaning and usage.
5. Weird
Perhaps the year’s most surprising word on the shortlist is weird. Generally, a word with such common usage doesn’t see such an uncommon, sharp increase in use across different domains, from politics to social media. Weird typically has a similar frequency in searches as its synonyms like strange, but this year the word was searched consistently around 200% more often than strange in general and 426% more often in searches related to politics, compared to searches before the 2024 presidential election.
According to Time, the platform pointed out that the choice of “demure” reflects a shift in public life, as our collective vocabulary moves away from themes focused on isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and turns with a greater emphasis on “personal presentation and appearance” as face-to-face experiences return to center stage.
For 2023, Dictionary.com had chosen the word “hallucinate“, mainly in the context of artificial intelligence. This year, however, its top picks have shifted more towards words with high online popularity.
