Lifestyle
'Demure' is Dictionary.com's word of the year. If that's news to you, here's the backstory
Dictionary.com lexicographers analyze headlines, social media trends, search engine results and other data to come up with the word of the year. This year, it’s “demure.”
Dictionary.com/Screenshot by NPR
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Dictionary.com/Screenshot by NPR
“Demure” is Dictionary.com’s word of the year, with all the credit for its popularity going to lifestyle and beauty influencer Jools Lebron and her catchphrase, “very demure, very mindful.”
“Demure” means “reserved, quiet, or modest,” but the reaction to Lebron’s use of the word was anything but.
Dictionary.com calls demure’s rise in usage “meteoric” in 2024, after Lebron started using it in early August.
“Between August 2023 and July 2024, there was no significant trend in the usage of the word demure,” according to Dictionary.com. “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.”
Dictionary.com’s lexicographers analyze headlines, social media trends, search engine results and other data to come up with its word of the year, calling it a “linguistic time capsule” that captures “pivotal moments in language and culture.”
The moment was certainly pivotal for Lebron. Her TikTok audience skyrocketed. Celebrities, including Jennifer Lopez and Khloé Kardashian, made their own “demure” videos. Lebron was interviewed on CBS Mornings and appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! with guest host RuPaul.
“Very demure, very mindful” was so popular, there was a surge in trademark applications by people trying to capitalize on Lebron’s motto.
Lebron reacted demurely to the news.
Other words that stood out for Dictionary.com’s lexicographers this year were “brainrot,” “brat” and “extreme weather.”
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
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