For the first time in its history, Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year has been awarded to a pictograph, an emoji of a face with tears of joy.
Wondering why? Well, Oxford Dictionaries claim it’s because the ‘Tears Of Joy’ emoji best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015.
Having collaborated with SwiftKey, a mobile tech business, Oxford Dictionaries discovered that the emoji was actualy the most used emoji in 2015, making up 20% of all emojis used in the United Kingdom , and 17% of those in the United States.
The word ’emoji’ itself has also gained increasing popularity this year. Invented in the 1990s, it has been used in the English language since 1997, but Oxford Dictionaries Corpus discovered its use more than tripled this year, in comparison to that of last.
Other contenders for Word of the Year were, as usual, actual words. The shortlist included: Sharing economy, They (as a singular word), On fleek, Ad blocker, Refugee, Brexit, Dark Web, and Lumbersexual.
Last year’s Word of the Year was ‘vape’, with ‘selfie’ winning in 2013, and ‘omnishambles’ the year before that.
