'Demure' is Dictionary.com's 2024 Word of the Year
“Demure,” a word that went viral on TikTok, has been announced as Dictionary.com’s 2024 Word of the Year.
According to the online dictionary, the word “demure” had a 1,200% increase in usage between January and the end of August this year, which its lexicographers attribute to TikTok user Jools Lebron who went viral for the phrase, “very demure, very mindful” on her TikTok videos.
“By the week of Aug.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,” it noted.
The usage of the term shifts from its traditional use when describing someone as reserved, quiet, or modest to being used to describe a “refined and sophisticated appearance or behavior” in different contexts.
Dictionary.com said they selected Word of the Year based on data of newsworthy headlines, trends on social media, and search engine results, among others that made an impact in conversations both online and in the real world.
Among the words that were shortlisted as the WOTY are “brainrot,” which refers to an effect of consuming too much low-quality content on social media, or referring to the low-quality content itself; “brat” which was popularized after the release of Charli XCX’s album of the same name, and “weird,” which was mostly used in the context of politics.
Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year in 2023 was “hallucinate,” which refers to false information relating to artificial intelligence.
