Rawdogging. Yapping. Delulu. Surf boarding terms? Kinky yoga positions? No, these are just a sample of the runners-up for the 2024 Word of the Year title. Dictionary.com, the Cambridge Dictionary, Collins Dictionary and Oxford Dictionary have all recently announced their winners. The criteria: Which word was looked up most? Which word captured what was happening in 2024? And what was interesting about the word from a language point of view?
Cambridge Dictionary’s 2024 Word of the Year is “manifest,” as in we can all channel our dreams. US gymnast Simone Biles manifested her medals at the Paris Olympics and English-Albanian singer Dua Lipa (voted one of the most influential people of 2024 by Time magazine), manifested headlining the five-day Glastonbury music festival, among other venues.
For those with less lofty ambitions, you can manifest your “influencer” channel and become a part of the trillion-dollar global “wellness” market. On TikTok and Instagram, people you have never heard of, like Toronto “growth for girlies mindset coach” Alicia Tghilian and New York “product pusher” Laura Galebe teach their followers “how to manifest anything you want.” Why live an ordinary life, when you can live an extraordinary one?
Galebe shared her “lucky girl syndrome” secret to her 42 million plus followers. “I just always expect great things to happen to me, and so, they do.” Manifest your monetary future. “Be delusional,” she gushes. Between getting spray tans, facial filler, hair and lash extensions, and spouting advice on “how to spot insecure friends” Galebe is so walking her talk. People (mainly girls and women it would seem) are crediting the law of entitlement for helping them get raises, find amazing apartments, and cheap flights.
On a different tone, the Dictionary.com Word of the Year is “demure.” Weekly searches for demure peaked at over 13,000,000 queries in the week of August 19. Why? All because of TikTokker and beauty influencer, Jools Lebron’s “very demure, very mindful” mantra she constantly posts in her videos. “Chase those dreams. Be responsible. Be mindful, be demure and don’t ever let no b*tch dull your shine.” Lebron, in her usual makeup of black, winged eyeliner and fake eyelashes, has amassed more than 2 million followers on TikTok.
Not to be outdone, Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez, and “Drag Race” host RuPaul have all taken the Lebrontra to the next level to promote their celebrity brands. From a recent campaign for her “sculpting solutions” shape wear, Skims, KK used the phrase: “See how I take my bts pictures…very cutsie, very mindful, very demure.” On Instagram, JLO promoted her new cocktail line Delola, with a video of her elegantly sipping a glass of sparkling “very demure, very mindful” Paloma Rosa, crafted with premium tequila, grapefruit, and elderflower.
The Word of the Year isn’t just about popular usage. Dictionary.com explains: “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.”
Collins Dictionary declared “brat” its 2024 Word of the Year (not A brat; just brat). Brat, the title of Scottish-Pakistani, Charli XCX’ album, refers to someone “who is confidently rebellious, unapologetically bold and playfully defiant.” Others characterize brat as those who have “a hedonistic attitude.” The marketing spin-offs are endless. Cologne. Sausages. Surf boards.
More relatable in my cortex, Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year: “Brain rot.” Oxford defines brain rot as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially…as the result of over consumption of material…considered to be trivial or unchallenging.” People use the term to mean brain fog, poor attention span, or gullible to misinformation. That’s pretty much what happens when we’re online, we’re continually lured and baited down endless, mindless rabbit holes.
As Rebecca Jennings said on the CBC Radio show Commotion: “…as long as there’s that incentive for people to keep creating these giant brain rot empires, then it will keep being shoved in our faces…. It’s good for the attention economy, which is the world we’re all living in.” Mel Woods added “that we are all just on our own little dissociation islands trying to process what’s happening out there… I think brain rot fits really well for this year because [it] is that isolated; I’m alone in my bed, scrolling and trying to feel something…because that’s the only thing that’s keeping me [distracted from] all of the horrible things going on right now.”
Some other words that didn’t make the cut: “Extreme weather” which needs no introduction. “Midwest nice,” describing the characteristic politeness, friendliness and hospitality of people from the Midwest, like Tim Walz. And a word that many Denman Islanders embrace with patriotic passion: “Weird.” It was searched more often than the word “strange” and spiked this year with the US Democrats describing every Republican candidate (in actions and words) as “weird” during the heady days of the 2024 presidential election.
And speaking of heady, here’s a bumper sticker idea: “Denman Island: Very Demure, Very Mindful.” Now that’s Brat.
