Strong Language<p><strong>Pornhub’s WOTY</strong></p><a href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/pornhub_map.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a> <p>Readers of this blog are probably familiar with the various Word of the Year (WOTY) competitions run by dictionaries and linguistic organizations. But they may not know that the site <em>Pornhub.com</em> has its own WOTY project of sorts. Each year Pornhub publishes a statistical analysis of its users, and in addition to providing global demographic data about who uses the site and when, it publishes the top and trending search terms used on it. </p> <p><a href="https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2024-year-in-review" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The 2024 analysis can be found here</a>. [Note that the analysis itself is not pornographic, but beware of clicking links within it as those may lead you to NSFW pages. Moreover, one may not want to visit this link on a work computer, as your IT department may notify your boss that you’ve visited Pornhub.]</p><p><strong><em>Hentai</em></strong>, sexually explicit cartoons in the style of Japanese manga, was the site’s no.1 search term again this year, with <strong><em>MILF</em></strong>, an acronym for a <em>mom I’d like to fuck</em>, also holding position at no.2. Demonstrating Pornhub’s global reach is the no.3 term, <strong><em>Pinay</em></strong>, referring to a Filipina, climbing from no.5 last year. On <em>Pornhubgay.com</em>, the top three terms remained unchanged from last year: <strong><em>twink</em></strong>, a man of youthful and slim appearance, at no.1, <strong><em>anime</em></strong> at no.2, and <em>Pinay’s</em> masculine counterpart <strong><em>Pinoy</em></strong> at no.3. </p><p></p><p>But the real interest is in what terms trended this past year, search terms that reflected other societal trends. The biggest trend clocked by Pornhub was <strong><em>demure</em></strong>, inspired by a 2 August TikTok viral video in which creator Jools Lebron described her hair and makeup as “very demure.” Lebron’s TikTok video was not overtly sexual, much less pornographic, but evidently it kicked off a trend in Pornhub searches, which included <em>demure</em> itself (+133%), <strong><em>mindful pleasure</em></strong> (+112%), and <strong><em>mindful JOI</em></strong> (+87%). <em>JOI</em> being an initialism for <em>jerk-off instructions</em>, a video in which a performer addresses the viewer, giving instructions on how to pleasure themselves and describing, and sometimes performing, various sexual acts themselves.</p><p>The tradwife phenomenon and the <em>Secret Lives of Mormon Wives</em> TV show also spawned a Pornhub trend: <strong><em>Mormon threesome</em></strong> (+122%), <strong><em>Mormon sex</em></strong> (+92%), <strong><em>tradwife</em></strong> (+72%), and <strong><em>Mormon wife</em></strong> (+71%). All this while Pornhub is largely blocked in Utah.</p><p>People were evidently lusting after Olympic athletes, too. In the third quarter of the year, corresponding to the Paris Olympics, the trending terms included: <strong><em>vollyball</em></strong> [<em>sic</em>] (+165%), <strong><em>swimmer</em></strong> (+101%), and the generic <strong><em>athlete</em></strong> (+88%).</p><p>In an American Dialect Society/Pornhub WOTY crossover, the phrase <strong><em>hawk tuah</em></strong>, coined in a viral YouTube video in which a woman used it describe spitting on a penis during oral sex, was one of the nominees for the ADS WOTY in the Most Fun While It Lasted category. On Pornhub, <em>hawk tuah</em> got over ten million searches, and <strong><em>spit on dick</em></strong> rose +233%.</p><p>One of the more fun analyses that Pornhub does is a map that shows for each US state the search term that is most popular relative to the other states. So, <strong><em>furry</em></strong> is relatively popular in Oregon, <strong><em>pee</em></strong> takes the honors for Wisconsin, <strong><em>friends mom</em></strong> in California, <strong><em>footjob</em></strong> in Colorado, <strong><em>anal dildo</em></strong> in Alaska, and <strong><em>facesitting</em></strong> in Massachusetts.</p><p>Pornhub has a global reach, and it also publishes the most popular search terms for the top twenty countries. In the United States, <strong><em>hentai</em></strong> was the most popular term, climbing from no.3 last year, <strong><em>Latina</em></strong> took second, climbing from no.4, and <strong><em>MILF</em></strong> slipped one spot from no.2 to no.3. In France, the top three search terms remained unchanged. Unsurprisingly, <strong><em>francaise</em></strong> was no.1, but foreign terms challenged the country’s linguistic nationalism, with <strong><em>hentai</em></strong> and <strong><em>MILF</em></strong> coming in second and third, respectively. In the Philippines, <strong><em>Pinay</em></strong> and <strong><em>Pinoy</em></strong> unsurprisingly took the top two spots, with <strong><em>Japanese</em></strong> coming in third, all unchanged from last year. In Mexico, it was <strong><em>hentai</em></strong> and <strong><em>lesbianas</em></strong>, unchanged in the top two spots, with <strong><em>culonas</em></strong> (big ass) displacing <strong><em>MILF</em></strong> at no.3. And in the United Kingdom, <strong><em>MILF</em></strong> and <strong><em>lesbian</em></strong> continued to hold the top two spots, but <strong><em>British</em></strong> moved up two places, displacing <strong><em>Indian</em></strong>. <em>British</em> has been moving up the search rankings in recent years, perhaps reflecting some kind of post-Brexit xenophobia.</p><p>But overall, when one looks at the top search terms in the twenty countries, one is struck by how similar the lists are. Evidently tastes in porn genres do not vary all that much around the world. What is interesting, however, is which non-anglophone countries tend to use English terms and which use their native tongues. English terms dominate in the Philippines, Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands. Egypt has a mix of English and Arabic search terms. While France, Japan, Ukraine, Brazil, and Spanish-speaking countries tend to search in their native languages.</p><p>All of this leads one to ask, is porn a universal language, a lingua franca that unites rather than divides? Probably not, but with everything else going on in the world, it may provide some kind of common ground.</p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/anime/" target="_blank">#anime</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/furry/" target="_blank">#furry</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/hentai-2/" target="_blank">#hentai</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/internet/" target="_blank">#internet</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/language/" target="_blank">#language</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/milf/" target="_blank">#milf</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/mindful/" target="_blank">#mindful</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/mormon/" target="_blank">#Mormon</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/multilingual/" target="_blank">#multilingual</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/pinay/" target="_blank">#pinay</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/pinoy/" target="_blank">#pinoy</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/pop-culture/" target="_blank">#popCulture</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/pornhub/" target="_blank">#pornhub</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/pornography/" target="_blank">#pornography</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/relationships/" target="_blank">#relationships</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/sexual-slang/" target="_blank">#sexualSlang</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/slang/" target="_blank">#slang</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/tradwife/" target="_blank">#tradwife</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/twink/" target="_blank">#twink</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://stronglang.wordpress.com/tag/woty/" target="_blank">#WOTY</a></p>