War and conflict in contrast to the brat lifestyle – the Swedish list of new words 2024

War, criminality and global Internet slang are prominent themes in the Swedish list of new words 2024.

The year 2024 offered many reminders of the gloomy times we live in. In Russia’s war against Ukraine, we’ve witnessed the disastrous consequences of the dragon drone (drakdrönare, a type of incendiary unmanned aerial vehicle). And in Sweden’s increasing crime rates related to gang violence, criminals often use an “under-age hitman” (barntorped) to perform bombings and murders.

We’ve seen fewer new expressions referring to the ongoing climate crisis this year. One exception is coolcation (vacation in a cool climate), a telescope word that looks kind of cool on the surface, reflecting the fact that more people from warmer climates now visit countries like Sweden. But the truth behind this is, of course, that summer heat makes those climate tourists potential climate refugees.

On the Internet, in contrast, young people choose to focus on beauty and pleasure. Looksmaxing, for instance, is the concept of maximizing one’s good looks through things like food, skin care and plastic surgery. However, that’s no ambition for the artist Charli XCX, who in 2024 made the 90’s word brat (a young, rich person) take on a new meaning: a confident, independent and hedonistic attitude in people, partying through the brat summer (bratsommar).

Internet slang is not new to us. But in 2024, it definitely became more widespread, and more highlighted in the media. That’s why words like demure (‘humble, modest’), rawdogging (‘doing nothing’) and soft girl (‘a girl focusing on soft values like family and beauty’) ended up not only in the Swedish list but in many other lists of new words throughout the world.

English and Scandinavian word export

In a globalised world, new words generally tend to be just that – global. Which often, but not always, equals English. Words that we can find both on the Swedish list and on lists from other countries are also romantasy (a genre mix of romance and fantasy) and slop (outcome of poor quality from AI services). Even popular word parts of compounds are often spread globally, as when the artist Taylor Swift generates world-wide expressions like swiftie dad (a dad who, just as his child, is a fan of Swift) and Swiftflation (the economic impact by Taylor Swift when giving concerts in a country).

The majority of the English words in the Swedish list list are not English per se but so-called calques or loan translations into Swedish, for instance ankkurva from the English form duck curve and ultrasnabbt mode from ultra fast fashion.

Etymologi is not always easy to determine, however, as medieval English to a large extent consisted of words from the Nordic languages. For example, the floss, the word used for a popular dance move a few years back imported from the US, is actually an old North Germanic and Norwegian word for woolen thread. In recent years, quite a few words have – once again – been exported from Scandinavian languages to English. Well-known Swedish examples are flight shame (flygskam), lagom (balanced or just enough), and plogging (picking up rubbish while jogging; plogga). In 2024, the Swedish concept popcorn brain (popcornhjärna from the Swedish list 2019) has been established in psychologists’ terminology in English.

What is the Swedish list of new words?

The list of new Swedish words, Nyordslistan, is a compilation of around 30–35 new words and expressions that we, The Swedish Language Council, have published around Christmas since 1986, for the past ten years in cooperation with the language magazine Språktidningen. It’s a curated sample of words that have been especially frequent over the past year and at the same time, hopefully, say something about today’s society and the year that has passed.

We gather words by consuming newspapers, television, radio, podcasts, social media, and so on, but also through targeted searches in text corpora. Hundreds of new words and expressions are registered at the Language Council every year, and at the end of the year we pick a small sample of these words to the Swedish word list. The words on the list must meet certain criteria regarding frequency, novelty, word formation et cetera.

Chosen but not approved

A common misunderstanding is that the words are “approved” by the language council, that they are “the official new words” and now part of “the official Swedish dictionary”. But linguists do not have a special license to invent or approve words, that is something all language users can do by creating and using them. What linguists do is to detect and define those words. If the words are used sufficiently often, they may eventually end up in dictionaries. Almost 50 % of the words in our lists are long-lasting enough to enter a Swedish dictionary, normally after several years of use.

Therefore, the list is also a reminder that everybody has the opportunity – and the responsibility – to create new words. Because we continuously need new ways to express want we to say. Accordingly, the most important words are those that fill a “semantic gap” and thereby enable us to speak of new phenomena and things that previously had no name.