(CNN) — After Iran intensified its demands over the weekend before it would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump didn’t threaten new strikes but instead indicated that he planned to choke Iran economically. “We are low-keying it,” he told Axios over the weekend. “We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.”
This broke with Trump’s usual rhetorical pattern in talking about Iran, in which the president generally declares that a conclusive deal with Iran is imminent, threatens to annihilate Iran if it doesn’t comply, then calls the attacks off at the last minute — only to do it all over again.
What, precisely, does it mean to “low-key” the events of a war? It’s not the first time the president has employed this peculiar turn of phrase, transforming a word typically used as an adjective or adverb into a verb. In early April, as Israel’s continued bombing of southern Lebanon threatened negotiations with Iran, Trump used it to describe a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I spoke with Bibi and he’s going to low-key it,” he told NBC News at the time. “I just think we have to be sort of a little more low-key.”
The modern sense of the word “low-key” has evolved over time. The earliest iteration of the word appears to be the adjective “low-keyed,” first recorded in 1786 to describe a voice or piece of music in a low musical key. Beginning around the early 1800s, “low-key” was also used to describe visual art, and later photography, that was marked by dark or muted colors. The English poet Peter Bayley used it in an 1803 poetry collection to describe a painting of Jesus. “It was originally painted in a low key, and the drapery of the Saviour, which was then white, formed the principal light,” he wrote.
It was around the mid-1900s that “low-key” came to signify subtlety or restraint. The word appeared in a 1941 Frederick Post story to illustrate filmmaker Orson Welles’ proclivity for melodrama: “Welles likes strong histrionics and has no patience with the prevailing style of underplaying everything in movies,” the article read. “In fact, he believes that low-key acting is used mostly because it’s the only way Hollywood knows of avoiding clashes in emotional continuity.”
This sense of “low-key” to mean understated might be one way to read Trump’s remarks. Trump saying the US is “low-keying it” could mean that the administration is taking a more subdued approach in the face of an emboldened Iran. US officials have indicated that they believe Iran’s leverage in the Strait of Hormuz would give way to the significant economic pain that the US stands to inflict.
Newer, slangy uses of “low-key” offer other interpretations.
“Low-key” took on additional meanings as it passed into Black culture, one being a sense of secrecy or discretion. Usher’s 2004 hit “Yeah!” depicts him trying to “keep it down on the low-key” lest his girlfriend find out what he’s up to at the club. Another is the adverbial sense, used as a mitigator to mean “somewhat” (“Commuting in this humid weather is low-key annoying”) or to mean “modest” or “low profile” (“She acts low-key, but she’s actually a big deal”). “Low-key” also functions as an interjection, as in “Low-key, what is even happening with the US and Iran?” (The hyphen is often dropped in informal, contemporary use.)
These uses of “low-key” eventually spread beyond Black English and were adopted by young people more widely throughout the 2010s and 2020s. Today, “low-key” is part of a Gen Z vernacular marked by deflection and ironic detachment, said Adam Aleksic, a linguist known online as Etymology Nerd. To say, “I low-key like Drake,” for instance, suggests that the speaker enjoys the musical stylings of the Canadian rapper but understands that it’s uncool to admit it. (To say, “I high-key like Drake,” meanwhile, is to unabashedly proclaim one’s affinity for the artist.)
Trump saying the US is “low-keying” talks with Iran is also a kind of hedging. (See also: His remark that “we are only semi-negotiating with them.”) To Aleksic, the president’s comments convey that he isn’t particularly worried about Iran holding steadfast to its demands. “To admit that they’re too concerned would be to make a geopolitical blunder,” he said. “Saying ‘low-key’ is a way of addressing to the public that he’s doing one thing and signaling to Iran that he’s doing another thing.”
Jamaal Muwwakkil, an assistant professor at the University of Washington who teaches anthropology and linguistics, notes that using the word “low-key” can also be a marker of youth or coolness. And at least on the surface, Trump’s use of “low-keying” might come off as an octogenarian repeating a bit of internet slang without fully understanding its context.
But Trump is known for taking liberties with language. When the war first started, Trump repeatedly referred to it as an “excursion,” a word typically used for a brief leisure trip. He also made repeated references to “nuclear dust,” a nontechnical term that belies the process of uranium enrichment. And earlier this month, he announced that “the perimeters of a deal” had been reached.
“There’s this way of playing with language that he does that still allows it to be communicative,” Muwwakkil added.
In that respect, Muwwakkil said, Trump’s use of “low-keying” allows him to evade more substantive questions about where negotiations stand. The US and Iran have each raised the bar to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, suggesting that they’re even further from a deal than before. The world’s most critical waterway remains functionally closed, despite the president insisting that the US retains total control of it. And the war that Trump initially said would last “four to five weeks” has now stretched on for months, with no clear end in sight. When the president says that the US is “low-keying” talks with Iran, he avoids committing to answers about the path forward.
“This is, I think, foregrounding that there’s going to be a marked lack of details again,” Muwwakkil said.
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