'Selfie' named as Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year

Oxford Dictionaries editors chose the word “selfie”, which is very popular in social media, as their word of the year.

18:14 19 November 2013

Oxford Dictionaries editors have chosen Selfie: "a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website" – as the word of the year after the frequency of its usage has increased by 17,000per cent for the past 12 months. 

Editorial director Judy Pearsall said: "Using the Oxford Dictionaries language research programme, which collects around 150m words of current English in use each month, we can see a phenomenal upward trend in the use of selfie in 2013, and this helped to cement its selection."

According to reports, the word was first used in an Australian forum back in 2002. "Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped ofer [sic] and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie."

Judy Pearsall explained: "The hashtag #selfie appeared on the photo-sharing website Flickr as early as 2004, but usage wasn't widespread until around 2012.