Memes

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

2048

Sliding tiles together until they reached a number. Made in a weekend, played by everyone for a month, and still installed on the phones of people who forgot.

▸ 2014peak 2014still up

● Alivephr.✎ 7

Fellow Kids

A brand or an adult trying too hard to sound young. The GIF is from 2012 and the situation is from every quarter since.

▸ 2014peak 2017still up

☠ Deadn.

Girlboss

A female founder, as a brand identity. Died in the summer of 2020 when several of the founders in question resigned in the same fortnight.

▸ 2014peak 2017†2020

☠ Deadadj.✎ 4

On Fleek

Perfectly done, of eyebrows. Coined in a six-second video, used by IHOP within a year, and gone within two; the coiner received nothing.

▸ 2014peak 2015†2016

● Alivev.

Sealioning

Persistent, polite requests for evidence intended to exhaust rather than learn. Named for a cartoon sea lion, and the cartoon is still the clearest definition.

▸ 2014peak 2016still up

☠ Deadadj.✎ 3

Woke

Alert to injustice. Taken up, then taken over, then used exclusively by its opponents, which is the fastest documented full inversion of a word.

▸ 2014peak 2016†2018

● Aliveabbr.✎ 2

AITA

'Am I the asshole?' — a subreddit for moral judgement, whose verdicts (NTA, YTA, ESH) became a vocabulary and whose stories became, via the story voice, a genre of video. The record's entry for the forum as a court, and the reason 'NTA' is said aloud in kitchens.

▸ 2013peak 2023still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Glow Up

The dramatic improvement in looks, style or life between a 'before' and an 'after' — a 'glow up' — from a 2013 Chief Keef lyric into the caption of every side-by-side school photo on the internet. The record's entry for the transformation that always seems to happen to other people.

▸ 2013peak 2019still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Google Glass

A camera on your face that made everyone around you into an unwilling participant. Died socially before it died commercially, which is rare for hardware.

▸ 2013peak 2013†2015

● Aliveabbr.✎ 3

NTA

'Not the asshole' — the verdict — and its family: YTA, ESH (everyone sucks here), NAH (no assholes here). The record's entry for the four-letter judgements that a forum uses to settle families, and that families now use to settle themselves.

▸ 2013peak 2023still up

☠ Deadn.

Normcore

Dressing deliberately unremarkably. Began as a joke inside a consultancy report and was taken seriously by everyone except its authors.

▸ 2013peak 2014†2015

● Aliven.

This Is Fine

A dog in a bowler hat drinking coffee in a burning room. Drawn in 2013, adopted by 2016, and now the default response to the news, which the cartoonist has said he would rather it were not.

▸ 2013peak 2016still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Two Sentence Horror

A horror story in two sentences — the first sets up, the second turns — as a Reddit form from 2013 that produced a few genuinely frightening pairs and a lot of imitations. The record's entry for the shortest genre in the file, and the ancestor of the creepypasta's TikTok form.

▸ 2013peak 2016still up

↺ Undeadn.✎ 2

Yik Yak

Anonymous posts visible only within a few miles. Beloved on campuses, banned by campuses, and brought back by new owners who bought only the name.

▸ 2013peak 2014†2017

☠ Deadphr.✎ 5

Ain't Nobody Got Time for That

A woman describing escaping a fire with a line that became a chorus. The last of the auto-tuned local news memes, and the point at which people noticed who was being laughed at.

▸ 2012peak 2012†2013

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Digital Detox

Not looking at your phone, as a retreat you could book. Fading because nobody completes one.

▸ 2012peak 2016still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Flat Design

No shadows, no gradients, no textures, no idea which bit was a button. Fading now that everything has been given a shadow again.

▸ 2012peak 2015still up

● Alivephr.✎ 4

Happy Black History Month

The greeting that opens February on the American internet, and the annual meme cycle that comes with it: the celebratory posts, the reaction images, the brands logging on with a graphic and logging off with the replies, and the running joke that the shortest month got the assignment. Black History Month itself dates from 1976 in the US; the online ritual of saying it on the first of the month, with a picture, settled on Twitter in the early 2010s and moved to TikTok and Instagram from around 2020. Comes back every year, which is the point.

▸ 2012peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Navy Seal Copypasta

A paragraph of escalating military threats — 'I have over 300 confirmed kills', 'you are nothing to me but just another target' — pasted as a reply to any insult since 2012, and the most-quoted text the internet has produced. The record's entry for the threat as a poem.

▸ 2012peak 2015still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Opp

An opponent, an enemy, a rival — 'opp', plural 'opps' — from Chicago drill English around 2012 into the general Gen Z and Gen Alpha word for anyone who has wronged you, from a rival school to a sibling who took the charger. The record's entry for the word that made 'enemy' sound like paperwork.

▸ 2012peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Crunchy Mom

The natural-everything parent — cloth nappies, no screens, homemade purees, suspicion of anything in a packet — the 'crunchy mom', from granola-crunching, on parenting forums since the early 2010s and a TikTok archetype with subtypes by 2023. The record's entry for the spectrum that runs from 'silky' to 'crunchy' with 'scrunchy' in between.

▸ 2011peak 2023still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Hide the Pain Harold

A stock-photo man smiling through something. The model, a Hungarian electrical engineer, gave a TEDx talk about becoming him, and has been visibly at peace since.

▸ 2011peak 2016still up

↺ Undeadn.✎ 5

Nyan Cat

A pop-tart cat trailing a rainbow, looped forever. Sold for roughly $590,000 a decade after everyone stopped watching it.

▸ 2011peak 2011†2014

● Alivephr.✎ 3

Praise the Sun

A knight raising his arms to the sun — 'praise the sun!' — from Dark Souls, as the gesture and phrase for any small triumph or any actual sunny day, and the record's entry for the most cheerful thing to come out of the least cheerful game.

▸ 2011peak 2016still up

↺ Undeadn.✎ 2

Turntable.fm

Avatars DJing for each other in a room, with a bopping-head vote. Dead in two years from music licensing, and brought back a decade later by the same man, who had not got over it.

▸ 2011peak 2011†2013

☠ Deadabbr.

YOLO

You only live once, as a justification. Twenty months from the song to teachers saying it in assembly.

▸ 2011peak 2012†2013

● Alivephr.✎ 3

You Died

The red text of the Dark Souls death screen, applied to any failure — a bad date, a burnt dinner, a Monday — since 2011, and the record's entry for the game over as a universal caption. Elden Ring's 2022 revival made it, briefly, everywhere again.

▸ 2011peak 2022still up

☠ Deadn.

Bed Intruder

A local news interview about a break-in, auto-tuned into a Billboard hit. The subject bought a house with the royalties, a rare case of the meme paying its source.

▸ 2010peak 2010†2011

● Aliven.✎ 3

Cringe

Second-hand embarrassment, as a noun, a verdict and a genre — from a verb to 'that's cringe' by 2015 and to the opposite of 'based' by 2020. The record's entry for the feeling that became a measurement.

▸ 2010peak 2019still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Cunningham's Law

The best way to get a right answer online is to post a wrong one. Still the fastest research method available, and the one this dictionary's correction system is built on.

▸ 2010peak 2014still up

↺ Undeadn.✎ 2

Doge

A Shiba Inu annotated in coloured Comic Sans. Outlived its own irony, then outlived its own death, and is now legal tender in the loosest possible sense.

▸ 2010peak 2013†2015

● Aliven.✎ 2

Filter Bubble

Only being shown what you already agree with. A warning that became an architecture, and then a business model.

▸ 2010peak 2016still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Google Buzz

A social feed switched on inside everyone's inbox that published your most-emailed contacts by default. Lasted twenty months and one class-action settlement.

▸ 2010peak 2010†2011

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Growth Hacking

Marketing, done by people who wanted to be engineers. Died when everyone realised it meant spamming your contacts list.

▸ 2010peak 2013†2016

☠ Deadn.✎ 6

Sharing Economy

Renting things to strangers, described as generosity. Died when it became clear that nothing was being shared and the economy was the point.

▸ 2010peak 2014†2018

◐ Dyingn.✎ 5

Thought Leader

A person paid to have opinions in public, self-described. Fading because nobody now admits to the title, though the behaviour is up.

▸ 2010peak 2015still up

↺ Undeadn.

Vaporwave

Slowed-down mall music, Roman busts, and Japanese text. A genre about the feeling of a shopping centre that has closed, which then closed.

▸ 2010peak 2013†2016

● Aliven.✎ 7

Betteridge's Law

Any headline ending in a question mark can be answered with no. Older than Betteridge, but he was the one to post it, which is how laws get named.

▸ 2009peak 2013still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Omegle

Talk to strangers, on camera, at random. Ran for fourteen years and closed with a letter from its founder saying the cost of fighting misuse had become unbearable, which was true from day one.

▸ 2009peak 2012†2023

● Aliven.✎ 2

Shrinkflation

The product staying the same price while quietly getting smaller — 'shrinkflation' — coined around 2009, ignored for a decade, and made a household word by 2022–24 side-by-side photos of chocolate bars, crisp packets and a toilet roll that had lost a few sheets. The record's entry for the word that made a nation measure its biscuits.

▸ 2009peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Slenderman

A tall figure in the treeline. The first folk monster in history with a documented birth certificate, a named author, and a timestamp.

▸ 2009peak 2014still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 5

Socially Awkward Penguin

A penguin walking away from a difficult moment. Died in 2015 when the photograph's owner began invoicing blogs that had posted it, the first meme to be billed to death.

▸ 2009peak 2011†2014

☠ Deadn.✎ 7

Cuil

A search engine that launched claiming a larger index than Google and returned pictures of the wrong people. Dead in two years; its only lasting result was the word 'cuil' as a synonym for hubris.

▸ 2008peak 2008†2010

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Hipster

A person who liked things before you did, identified by a beard and denied by everyone. Died when the last person who did not consider themselves one wrote a think piece about it.

▸ 2008peak 2011†2015

☠ Deadn.✎ 1

PlayStation Home

A 3D lobby where avatars queued to bowl. Shut in 2015 with almost no one noticing, which was also the experience of using it.

▸ 2008peak 2010†2015

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Swag

Confidence, as an accessory. The word of 2011, worn on hats in 2012, and explained by grandparents in 2013.

▸ 2008peak 2011†2013

▲ Fossiln.✎ 1

Trollface

A grin drawn in MS Paint that meant the whole thing was a setup. One of the few memes with a living rights-holder, which is precisely what ended it.

▸ 2008peak 2010†2014

● Aliven.✎ 2

Old Head

An older person — 'old head' — who has opinions about the current version of things and a firm belief that the earlier version was better, from hip-hop English into Gen Z internet as the standard label for anyone defending 2010s music, football or memes. The record's entry for the word the record is called most often.

▸ 1995peak 2024still up