The Oxford Dictionary ‘Word of the Year’ is…

The Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year has been selected and disclosed for all to laugh about and share in.  What is the Oxford Dictionary word of the year for 2013?

It’s official.  The Oxford Dictionary has labelled the word “Selfie” as word of the year 2013 beating out words like “twerk” to the title.  People everywhere are taking “selfies”… The statement from The Oxford Dictionaries talks about their selection of the word with the following insight:

“A picture can paint a thousand words

The decision was unanimous this year, with little if any argument. This is a little unusual. Normally there will be some good-natured debate as one person might champion their particular choice over someone else’s. But this time, everyone seemed to be in agreement almost from the start. Other words were considered, as you will see from our shortlist, but selfie was the runaway winner. It’s not a new word. For starters, it has already been included in Oxford Dictionaries Online (although not yet in the Oxford English Dictionary), and we wrote about it as part of our occasional Words on the Radar series back in June 2012. But our Word of the Year need not be a new word. However, it does need to demonstrate some kind of prominence over the preceding year or so and selfie certainly fits the bill. It seems like everyone who is anyone has posted a selfie somewhere on the Internet. If it is good enough for the Obamas or The Pope, then it is good enough for Word of the Year.

When it started

But what of the word itself? While it is safe to say that selfie’s star has risen over the last 12 months, it is actually much older than that. Evidence on the Oxford English Corpus shows the word selfie in use by 2003, but further research shows the earliest usage (so far anyway) as far back as 2002. Its use was, fittingly enough, in an online source – an Australian internet forum.”

Source: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/11/word-of-the-year-2013-winner/

According to their website, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a word, or expression, that has attracted a great deal of interest during the year to date. Every year, candidates for Word of the Year are debated and one is eventually chosen that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year and to have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance.

Note that the names of people, places, or events are not suitable as Words of the Year.

And an orbiting astronaut from NASA took this spectacular selfie

Have you ever taken a “Selfie”… Post one on our Facebook page today…