'Selfie' is chosen as word of the year by the Oxford Dictionaries
'Selfie,' which was chosen for inclusion in the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary this summer, was selected by the dictionary's publishers as the 2013 word of the year. 'Selfie' is a photo of a person snapped by themselves, usually using a cell phone.
'Selfie' was chosen as the Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year. Here, Michelle Obama, wife of then-presidential nominee Barack Obama, takes a photo with an attendee of a 2008 rally at Buchtel High School in Akron, Ohio.
Tony Dejak/AP
“Selfie” is the Oxford Dictionaries word of 2013.
The publishers of the Oxford Dictionaries selected the term for a picture taken by a person of themselves, usually with a cell phone, as the word of the year.
The Oxford Dictionaries’ blog noted there was “little if any argument” about “selfie” being awarded the title and that this was “a little unusual.”
“It seems like everyone who is anyone has posted a selfie somewhere on the Internet,” the blog states. “If it is good enough for the Obamas or The Pope, then it is good enough for Word of the Year.”
The use of the word has gone up by 17,000 percent since last fall, according to the Oxford Dictionaries.
According to the Oxford Dictionaries, the word was first used online in 2002 in an Australian Web forum, when someone wrote about a picture they had taken of themselves after falling down the stairs.
The shortlist for this year’s word included “binge-watch,” “bitcoin,” “showrooming,” which refers to a customer examining a product in a store and then ordering it online, “olinguito,” the name of a mammal which was discovered in 2013, and “twerk.”
"Selfie” joins 2012 word of the year “GIF” and 2011 winner “squeezed middle.”
The term was added to the online version of the Oxford Dictionaries this summer but has not yet been chosen for inclusion into the Oxford English Dictionary.