'Vape' is Oxford Dictionary's word of the year

MANILA, Philippines – Amid the heated debate whether or not electronic cigarettes are really safe, Oxford has chosen ‘vape’ as the word of the year.

It has been a  tradition of Oxford Dictionaries to choose the most popular word once a year. In 2013, the words was ‘selfie’ while ‘gif’ was chosen in 2012.

As stated by the OxfordDictionaries.com,  vape originated as an abbreviation of vapor or vaporize. As a  verb, it means ‘to inhale and exhale the vapor produced by an electronic cigarette or similar device,' while both the device and the action can also be known as a vape. It may also be defined as 'a substance diffused or suspended in the air, especially one normally liquid or solid: dense clouds of smoke and toxic vapor, chemical vapors' when used as a noun.

According to the Oxford Blog, the word was chosen because it has grown significantly in popularity, especially last April.

You are thirty times more likely to come across the word vape than you were two years ago, and usage has more than doubled in the past year.

Meanwhile, the blog has also listed the words that came close, but didn’t quite make it as Word of the Year:

1. bae n. used as a term of endearment for one’s romantic partner.
2. budtender n. a person whose job is to serve customers in a cannabis dispensary or shop.
3. contactless adj. relating to or involving technologies that allow a smart card, mobile phone, etc. to contact wirelessly to an electronic reader, typically in order to make a payment.
4. indyref, n. an abbreviation of ‘independence referendum’, in reference to the referendum on Scottish independence, held in Scotland on 18 September 2014, in which voters were asked to answer yes or no to the question ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’
5. normcore n. a trend in which ordinary, unfashionable clothing is worn as a deliberate fashion statement.
6. slacktivism, n., informal actions performed via the Internet in support of a political or social cause but regarded as requiring little time or involvement, e.g. signing an online petition or joining a campaign group on a social media website; a blend of slacker and activism.