Are You Very “Demure” and Very “Mindful?”
By • December 16, 2024 0 7
Want to impress your millennial or Gen Z relatives at your holiday gathering this year? Tell them they’re being “very demure” and “very mindful.”
Dictionary.com has named demure its 2024 word of the year off the heels of TikTok influencer Jools Lebron, whose video in August 2024 using the word went viral, since garnering 54.7 million views.
Lebron was riding in a car and discussed the best way to do her makeup for work. She said she doesn’t “look like a clown” when she goes to work and is “very demure, very mindful.” She also said the way she came to the interview is the way she got her job.
Since her use of the word demure (which means “reserved” or “modest” for those unfamiliar) the week of August 18, the word had almost 14 times more interest, having a practically overnight rise in popularity.
At the peak of the trend in late August, Dictionary.com reported that demure had 200 times more searches on its site than it did previously. To find the word of the year, Dictionary.com analyzes headlines, social media trends and additional data to name what they call its yearly “linguistic time capsule.”
Lebron now has 2.3 million TikTok followers and appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and “Good Morning America.”
In 2023, Dictionary.com named “hallucinate” as its word of the year, as it gained some popularity as the use of AI began to rise.
