MANILA, Philippines - For the first time in history, the Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year is not a word, but a pictograph.
It has been a tradition of Oxford Dictionaries to choose the most popular word once a year. In 2013, the word was ‘selfie’ while ‘vape’ was chosen in 2014.
For 2015, Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year is an emoji.
According to OxfordDictionaries.com, the "face with tears of joy" emoji was chosen because it best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015.
With help from SwiftKey, a mobile technology business, they identified the said emoji as the most frequently used emoji globally.
Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015 is… ! https://t.co/LjJyxO8cvv #OxfordWOTY pic.twitter.com/Ced28y3I6F
— Oxford Dictionaries (@OxfordWords) November 16, 2015 The website defines emoji as "a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication." The word is rooted from the Japanese, and came from the ‘picture’ + moji ‘letter, character’.
Runners up for the word of the year include the following:
- Ad blocker, noun: A piece of software designed to prevent advertisements from appearing on a web page.
- Brexit, noun: A term for the potential or hypothetical departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, from British + exit.
- Dark Web, noun: The part of the World Wide Web that is only accessible by means of special software, allowing users and website operators to remain anonymous or untraceable.
- On fleek, adjectival phrase: Extremely good, attractive, or stylish.
- Lumbersexual, noun: A young urban man who cultivates an appearance and style of dress (typified by a beard and check shirt) suggestive of a rugged outdoor lifestyle.
- Refugee, noun: A person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.
- Sharing economy, noun: An economic system in which assets or services are shared between private individuals, either for free or for a fee, typically by means of the Internet.
- They (singular), pronoun: Used to refer to a person of unspecified sex.