From lore to demure, the top words for 2024 each have their own sprinkle of ‘Rizz’. Here are the 6 words up for the coveted title of 2024’s Oxford Word of the Year!
Global (20 November 2024) — If you haven’t said demure this year, have you even spoken at all? Or how about sneaking in a ‘here’s the lore’ every time you need to provide a juicy bit of context to a situation? If you’ve used either of these words in 2024, congratulations—you’re (probably) chronically online. But if you haven’t, it might be in your best interest, especially if you ever encounter a Gen Z in the wild, to brush up on what the kids are saying. After all, these are two of the 6 words competing for Oxford’s Word of the Year we’re talking about!
There are fierce contenders for this year’s top word; each with its own sprinkle of rizz. The good news is that there’s still time to vote for the word that you think should wear the crown and take on the baton from the likes of ‘rizz’ (2023) and ‘goblin mode’ (2022).
The Top Words of the Year Shortlist
- Lore (n.): A body of (supposed) facts, background information, and anecdotes relating to someone or something, regarded as knowledge required for full understanding or informed discussion of the subject in question.
- Brain rot (n.): Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterised as likely to lead to such deterioration.
- Dynamic pricing (n.): The practice of varying the price for a product or service to reflect changing market conditions, in particular, the charging of a higher price at a time of greater demand.
- Demure (adj.): Of a person: reserved or restrained in appearance or behaviour. Of clothing: not showy, ostentatious, or overly revealing.
- Slop (n.): Art, writing, or other content generated using artificial intelligence, shared and distributed online in an indiscriminate or intrusive way, and characterised as being of low quality, inauthentic, or inaccurate.
- Romantasy (n.): A genre of fiction combining elements of romantic fiction and fantasy, typically featuring themes of magic, the supernatural, or adventure alongside a central romantic storyline.
Voting will remain open for two weeks, closing on Thursday 28 November. The Oxford University Press will conduct a last detailed analysis, considering corpus data, votes, and public commentary on the finalists, before naming the definitive Word of the Year for 2024 on 2 December!
You can cast your vote here.
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