Normcore
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A unisex fashion trend characterized by average-looking, unpretentious clothing. uncountable
"That means he's normcore. Dangerously regular. Dresses only in T-shirts an' jeans, uses slang appropriated from other sub cultures, but only 3 years after it's^([sic – meaning its]) first use, an' only after it's been used in a sitcom."
- 2 Any style that is mainstream or unremarkable. attributive, broadly, uncountable
""That's normcore painting, and that's what people are buying and trading now," [Deborah] Kass said, along with some slightly more colorful critique she opted to keep off the record."
Example
More examples"Tom is always dressed in normcore basics like jeans and T-shirts."
Etymology
From norm(al) (“according to norms or rules or to a regular pattern”) + -core (suffix denoting genres of music and subcultures (often specialized and underground)), coined by the cartoonist Ryan Estrada in a guest comic strip for the webcomic Templar, Arizona on 17 September 2008: see the quotation. It was popularized in a stylized, tongue-in-cheek trend report produced by the collective K-HOLE in 2013.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.