Yesterday, Oxford Dictionaries announced their 2015 Word of the Year, which recognizes an arrangement of letters that has most significantly gained linguistic currency over the past 12 months.
That word is… not a word at all. It’s an emoji:
Yes, that one, specifically – the most used emoji globally (20% of all the emojis used in the UK in 2015, and 17% of those in the US).
The laughing-crying emoji beat out eight other front-runners, including other millennialisms like on fleek, lumbersexual, and sharing economy.
“Emojis are no longer the preserve of texting teens – instead, they have been embraced as a nuanced form of expression, and one which can cross language barriers,” explained Oxford Dictionaries in a blog post. “[It] even appeared as the caption to the Vine which apparently kicked off the popularity of the term on fleek, which appears on our WOTY shortlist.”
Fascinating stuff.
This year’s selection is the latest in a long string of Words of the Year that reflect the influence of millennial slang. The winning words of the past three years are vape, selfie, and GIF. The word ’emoji’, meanwhile, has seen a meteoric rise in itself; though it has been around since 1997, its use more than tripled this year compared to 2014.
Many were not please with Oxford Dictionaries’ futile attempt to appear hip. “Does this mark the final nail in the coffin of Oxford Dictionaries?” wondered one commenter, while several others were made to lose faith in humanity and call for the doom of civilization as a result of the decision. One ‘Little Miss Katy’ even requested that the world stop so she may get off.
OD said the tears of joy emoji was chosen as the ‘word’ that best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015.
Sadly, and most appropriately, our reaction to this news can be summed up pretty easily:
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