Selfie is word of the year

The English language is changing all the time, with new words being added. Oxford Dictionaries likes to recognise inventiveness and the changing language.

Oxford Dictionaries has just named the word “selfie” as the word of the year. The word means to take a picture of yourself, and has evolved from the practice which came from people taking self-portraits with their mobile phones, often for use on social media platforms. Apparently its frequency of use has increased by 17,000% in the last year.

Another word on the shortlist was “twerk” – a dance recently made notorious by the US actress Miley Cyrus, which really brought the word to the fore.

“Binge-watch” is a new one and means watching lots of TV.

Another one in the frame was “schmeat”, which means a form of meat synthetically produced from biological tissue.

Previous winners of this title have been “chav” in 2004, “credit crunch” in 2008 and “omnishambles” in 2012.

It seems that Oxford Dictionaries run a research programme which collects English words currently in use on the web each month. Hmmm, I hope they delete words that are unquestionably errors.

Selfie’s use can be traced back to 2002, when it was first used on an Australian forum, describing the picture he posted of himself as a “selfie”.

Selfie has not yet made it into the Oxford English Dictionary printed edition.