Most have us have long moved on from “brat summer”, when, sparked by Charli xcx’s album of the same name, wearing slime green and embracing your inner messiness was on trend. But the lexicographers at Collins dictionary are still firmly in their brat era, naming it their 2024 word of the year.
Though Collins already defined “brat” as “someone, especially a child”, who “behaves badly or annoys you”, it has been selected as word of the year because of its new definition: “characterised by a confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude”.
“‘Brat’ has become one of the most talked about words of 2024,” Collins said. It “resonated with people globally and ‘brat summer’ established itself as an aesthetic and a way of life”.
Brat tops a list of 10 words chosen by the dictionary publisher which represent 2024. Another pop star-inspired word made the list, “era”, inspired by Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. “Supermajority” was the only word that reflected the year’s high number of elections – it apparently saw a sharp increase in usage around the time of the UK general election in July.
As is often the case when it comes to words of the year, expressions popularised by social media featured heavily on the list. “Yapping” – ie talking too much – has become a popular term on TikTok, as has “looksmaxxing”, defined by Collins as “attempting to maximise the attractiveness of one’s physical appearance”.
“Delulu”, slang for deluded, is another word known for its social media usage, along with “rawdogging”, which originally emerged as slang for sex without a condom, but is now more widely used as a term for doing something – most commonly taking a flight or train journey – without entertainment or assistance. Meanwhile “brainrot”, “an inability to think clearly caused by excessive consumption of low-quality online content”, has also made the top 10.
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Completing the list are “anti-tourism” – the opposition of large-scale tourism – and “romantasy”, a steamy subgenre of fantasy that has become hugely popular in recent years via authors such as Sarah J Maas and Rebecca Yarros.
Alex Beecroft, managing director of Collins, said that “while ‘supermajority’ does the heavy lifting in a year of political upheaval in the UK and around the world, the big disruptors in language have come from different sources. With many of this year’s notable words being popularised by generations Z and Alpha, we can confidently say this is the most ‘brat’ word of the year list ever!”
Collins dictionary monitors its 20bn-word database along with a range of media sources to create an annual list that aims to “reflect our ever-evolving language and the preoccupations of those who use it”. The words on the list tend to be a mixture of completely new words and existing terms that have been particularly notable that year – “lockdown” was the word of the year in 2020, for example – or ones that have developed additional meanings, such as brat. Last year’s word of the year was AI.