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“Demure,” a word that went viral over the summer time, has been named Dictionary.com’s 2024 word of the year — beating out different contenders like “brainrot,” “brat,” and “weird.”
In an announcement Monday, the web site mentioned that the word skilled a “meteoric rise in usage” in 2024 — up 1,200% between January and August — a spike that was largely attributed to TikToker and sweetness influencer Jools Lebron’s popularization of the phrase “very demure, very mindful” in a collection of satirical movies that shook the web.
“You see how I do my makeup for work? Very demure. Very mindful,” Lebron says in a single of her TikToks, donning a barely pared-down model of her standard make-up of black, winged eyeliner and pretend eyelashes.
“The way I came to the interview is the way I go to the job. A lot of you girls go to the interview looking like Marge Simpson and go to the job looking like (her sisters) Patty and Selma. Not demure,” she provides, utilizing characters from “The Simpsons” TV present to make her level.
“Demure” has traditionally been used to explain discrete and reserved habits, however “a new usage has spread through social media,” Dictionary.com mentioned, highlighting the word’s current associations with an individual’s look and the manner they act at work or in public locations.
“Every video is me just referencing me,” Lebron says in another video with the playful caption “obscurity of demurity,” the place she explains the joke after customers questioned if individuals must be judged on their appearances at work. “That’s the joke!”
The satire is clearest in a clip during which the TikTok star asserts that she’s going to behave in a demure, aware manner whereas going out on the Las Vegas Strip. Her sober assertions that she’ll be again in mattress by 10 p.m. are intercut with scenes of Lebron from later that evening, laughing at a membership and struggling to seek out her lodge room.
Notable figures like Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez, and “Drag Race” host RuPaul have all taken benefit of the pattern to advertise their manufacturers.
In photographs from a current marketing campaign for her shapewear model Skims, Kardashian used the phrase in the caption: “See how I take my bts pictures…very cutsie (sic), very mindful, very demure…not like the other girls” Taking to Instagram, Jennifer Lopez captioned a submit promoting her cocktail line Delola with the caption “very demure…very mindful,” together with a video of her elegantly sipping.
“See how I’m reading this book? Very demure. I don’t dog-ear pages, I put in a bookmark,” RuPaul mentioned in a video selling on-line bookstore Allstora. “And I don’t divulge the ending to my friends. Very considerate. And also, my cell phone is on do-not-disturb. Very demure. Very mindful.”
Lebron additionally appeared in a video with make-up artist Patrick Ta, who was selling a brand new pores and skin basis from his magnificence line.
Lebron, who is transgender, mentioned that the fame from her “demure” movies has helped her finance the rest of her transition. “I used to be crazy and out of control and then I found some demurity, and along with that came success,” she mentioned, on an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live. She has now amassed greater than 2.3 million followers on TikTok.
Dictionary.com mentioned that its resolution to decide on “demure” this year was knowledgeable by a deep evaluation of social media developments, information headlines and phrases that transcended conversations on-line, seeping into on a regular basis dialogue.
The web site’s word of the year in 2023 was “hallucinate” — a reference to the rise of chatbots and synthetic intelligence that may typically spur misinformation.
“Brat,” one other word that has taken on new that means in 2024, was named Collins Dictionary’s word of 2024 for being one of the most talked about words on and offline.