Each year on the internet brings an entirely new vernacular.
Last year, ijbol and “serving cunt” rose to timeline prominence, and so far, 2024 has 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.
‘Pookie’ is more than a pet name. TikTok’s new favorite word is rooted in a rich cultural history.
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 first gained traction online: 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 to gain traction online, glazing refers to overhyping something. According to KnowYourMeme, it first appeared on Discord in 2021 before becoming popular on Twitch in 2022, but 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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