Oxford Dictionaries’ Surprising Word of the Year 2015

Posted on by Chris The Story Reading Ape

Nicholas C. Rossis's avatarNicholas C. Rossis

Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015 | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's books Image: Oxford Dictionaries

The Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year 2015 is…

Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015 | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's books

That’s right – for the first time ever, the Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year is a pictograph: 😂, officially called the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji, though you may know it by other names. There were other strong contenders from a range of fields, outlined below, but 😂 was chosen as the ‘word’ that best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015.

Why was this chosen?

As Oxford Dictionaries explains, Emojis (the plural can be either emoji or emojis) have been around since the late 1990s, but 2015 saw their use, and use of the word emoji, increase hugely.

😂 was chosen because it was the most used emoji globally in 2015, making up 20% of all the emojis used in the UK in 2015, and 17% of those in the US: a sharp rise from…

View original post 359 more words

10 thoughts on “Oxford Dictionaries’ Surprising Word of the Year 2015”

DON'T BE SHY - LEAVE A REPLY

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.