The Word Definitions Each Country Looks Up the Most, Mapped

Language is ever-changing. New words are constantly being added to the dictionary, and some definitions even shift over time. This fact may make it challenging to keep your vocabulary sharp. If you’ve ever had to look up the definition of a word you were unsure of, you’re not alone: The map below shows the most commonly searched word definitions worldwide.

To see which definitions people are looking up in each country, the language site Wordtips gathered Google search volume data from November 2024 via Semrush’s keyword research tool. Researchers determined the top words based on how often they were paired with “definition” in search queries. They accounted for native translations when analyzing the international data, defaulting to English when English queries were more popular than the country’s native language.

The results showed that demure, fascism, and resilience were the most-searched terms in six countries each. Demure—most commonly searched word in Vietnam and Lebanon—became popular after TikToker Jools LeBron posted about her work-appropriate look. The internet star described herself as “very demure,” meaning modest, cute, and subtle. The word also made it to Unscrambler‘s list of the top 10 most-searched slang terms in the U.S. in 2024. 

On the more serious end of the spectrum are terms like fascism and resilience. Wordtips reports that resiliencia (Spanish for resilience) is the most-searched word definition in Venezuela. The Royal Spanish Academy defines the term in Spanish as the “capacity of a living being to adapt to a disturbing agent or an adverse state or situation.” Other Latin American countries that have experienced political strife in recent history—including Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras—are also searching for the word in high volumes.

People in several European countries, meanwhile, are curious about the definition of fascism. Merriam-Webster defines it as “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime {...} that exalts nation and often race above the individual.” Though the continent had a violent history of fascism in the early 20th century, many Google users in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland still needed a refresher on what exactly it entails.

On the other side of the pond, gaslighting tops search data in the U.S. Originating with the 1944 film Gaslight, it refers to a form of psychological manipulation that causes the victim to “question the validity of their own thoughts.”

You can get more detailed information about the top 10 most-searched definitions in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, and the United Kingdom on Wordtips’s website.

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