Each year on the internet brings an entirely new vernacular.
Last year, ijbol and "serving cunt" rose to timeline prominence, and 2024 revitalized yap and pookie. If you haven't given your life over to TikTok and X / Twitter or have someone who has in your life, it can be hard to keep up with the breakneck speed of internet slang.
But fear not: Here are some key internet vocabulary words from the year defined.
Brat
If there was one thing that dominated culture in 2024, it was brat by Charli XCX. The hit album changed the word's meaning forever, with the pop star defining what it means to be a brat in a TikTok. "You're just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes," she said. "[She's someone] who feels herself, but then, also, like, maybe has a breakdown, but kinda parties through it. It's very honest. It's very blunt. It's very volatile."
There's also a lot of lime green, cigarettes, and wrap-around sunglasses involved. Bonus points if your name is Julia.
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Crashing out
Crashing out is an all-too-familiar example of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) slang getting appropriated as TikTok slang.
According to KnowYourMeme, the term originated in Baton Rogue, Louisiana, and can be heard in music from local rappers like NBA YoungBoy. It refers to reckless behavior or losing self-control and became the phrase du jour on TikTok in late 2024.
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Demure
Thanks to TikTokker Jools Lebron's viral "very mindful, very cutesy" video, demure will forever hold a new meaning. As defined by Dictionary.com, demure means "characterized by shyness or modesty; reserved," but it's come to mean anything from self-aware, sophisticated, and restrained to good and praiseworthy and, well, nothing. The word defined the end of summer 2024 on the internet and was added to many people's vocabularies. Dictionary.com even crowned it the Word of the Year.
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Failmarriage
The internet enthusiasm around Challengers, specifically the marriage between tennis player Art (Mike Faist) and his coach Tashi (Zendaya), renewed interest in a word that's gained traction online in recent years: failmarriage. Think of the marriage between Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) in HBO's Succession. The word failmarriage means precisely what it sounds like — a marriage in free fall, but the couple chooses to stay together anyway.
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Glazing
Perhaps one of the more niche words used to gain traction online is glazing, which refers to overhyping something. According to KnowYourMeme, it first appeared on Discord in 2021 before becoming popular on Twitch in 2022. Still, it's only in the past couple of years that the term has migrated to TikTok, exposing it to a more widespread audience.
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Pookie
Thanks to the Southern TikTok couple Campbell and Jett Puckett, the term of endearment came back in a significant way in 2024. Believe it or not, "You're looking amazing tonight, pookie" happened this year. While the term floated around on TikTok starting in 2020, Jett's endearing insistence on referring to his wife as "pookie" catapulted it into the mainstream.
While pookie is typically used as a vocative, like honey or sweetie, fandoms began using it to describe their faves. For example, these days, it's common to see someone online say, "Glen Powell is pookie." Language is constantly evolving online.
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Yap
In 2024, you don't chitchat, gab, prattle, or blabber; you yap. Yapping refers to talking excessively or at length. Those who can't stop yapping are yappers. Those who are extremely online love to yap and self-identify as yappers. The verb initially referred to a small dog and then morphed into a verb describing the high-pitched bark of a dog, but by the 1800s, it already referred to humans talking.
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Want more of the best of 2024? Join Mashable as we look back at all the internet slang, TikTok songs, movies, memes, dating trends, hyped up hardware, scientific discoveries, social media apps, and more that have delighted and amazed us this year.
