For the first time, Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is not a word but a pictograph popularly known as the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji.

emojis word of the year


Emoji was chosen by the free online english dictionary as it best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015 and the use of emojis surged significantly according to the study of mobile technology business SwiftKey.

The small digital image or icon came from Japanese word e ‘picture’ + moji ‘letter or character’ which is similar to the English word emoticon.

Emojis have been around since 1997 and its usage was tripled in 2015 compared to previous year based on the data of Oxford Dictionaries Corpus.

But, what are the words that were shortlisted this year?

shortlisted words 2015 oxford

Last year, the word "vape" emerged victorious as the most popular word. It is an abbreviation of vapour or vaporize with the verb means ‘to inhale and exhale the vapour produced by an electronic cigarette or similar device.’ In 2013, "selfie" has been named as word of the year.

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