The Oxford Dictionaries has chosen its Word of the Year for 2015: An emoji depicting the “face with tears of joy.”
Oxford Dictionaries cited an explosion in “emoji culture” over the last year as one of the reasons “face with tears of joy” was selected.
“You can see how traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st century communication,” said Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Dictionaries in a statement. “It’s not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps—it’s flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully. As a result emoji are becoming an increasingly rich form of communication, one that transcends linguistic borders.”
Other words and expressions that made the 2015 Word of the Year shortlist: Ad blocker, Dark Web, lumbersexual, on fleek, refugee, Brexit, and sharing economy. A curious entry into the shortlist was also “they.”
“The pronoun ‘they’ is one of the most common words in English, but it has been thrust into the spotlight recently with reference to people with non-binary gender identities (that is, people who identify as neither male or female),” the release said.
“Face with tears of joy” emoji continues a recent trend from Oxford Dictionaries in selecting “Words of the Year” that are associated with web culture. 2012’s U.S. Word of the Year was “GIF” and 2013’s Word of the Year was “selfie.” Last year’s Word of the Year was “vape.”
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