Dictionary.com has selected its 2024 Word of the Year, but the word doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it does.
Editors at Dictionary.com monitored web searches to select a word that showed “meteoric” growth in searches this year. That’s how they came to select demure as the 2024 Word of the Year.
I’m not sure the people who are suddenly enraptured with the word actually understand what it means. (Or what it used to mean before a TikTok video went viral.)
The word dates back to the late 14th century when it emerged from an Anglo-French surname. Its meaning from the start was “calm” or “settled” suggesting a meaning from an Old French word for “mature” and “discreet.”
In the 1990 science-fiction film Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character is asked to select the characteristics of a woman who will be involved in a “memory trip” he is about to take. One of the options he selects for this woman is demure.
It’s not a word you hear very often — at least not before this year. One reference from a nearly 35-year-old movie certainly wouldn’t be enough to elevate it to the top of searches.
Blame a TikTok video
TikTok user Jools Lebron produced a series of videos starting in August in which she coined the phrase “Very demure. Very mindful” to give advice on how to be modest and respectful in various settings, such as the workplace.
You can decide for yourself whether she lives up to the classic definition of the word demure by watching this video on TikTok.
Dictionary.com, in its 2024 Word of the Year announcement, said it saw “a nearly 1200% increase in usage in digital web media alone” between January and August.
The site adds this:
Though the term demure has traditionally been used to describe those who are reserved, quiet, or modest, a new usage has spread through social media — one used to describe refined and sophisticated appearance or behavior in various contexts, such as at work or on a plane. This increased focus on public appearance and behavior comes at a time when employees are increasingly returning to offices after hybrid remote work following the pandemic.
Are we still arguing over returning to offices? (But I digress….)
The Online Etymology Dictionary points out that the word’s meaning has shifted, though “only slightly” since it came into being.
Its alternate meaning refers to those whose modesty and reservation is “more affectation than sincere expression.” Affectation means “an unnatural form of behavior meant especially to impress others.” Putting on a show, as it were.
Those who exhibit a fake persona or who fake any portion of their presentation for effect might not be all that “demure” after all, if you consider the word’s original meaning.
But if we’re basing the selection of a “word of the year” not on the value of a word but rather just on Google searches, then I guess what a word does or doesn’t mean is hardly all that important, right?
