THE WORD OF THE YEAR IS NOT A WORD
The word of the year, according to the Oxford Dictionaries, is a real first. It's not a word. It's the emoji "face with tears of joy," shown in the photo gallery below in case you don't know what it looks like. Why an emoji? The Oxford Dictionaries' editors say it "best reflected the ethos, mood and preoccupations of 2015." Emojis have been around since the late 1990s, but 2015 saw their use -- and use of the word emoji -- increase hugely. Working with SwiftKey, Oxford University Press determined frequency and usage statistics for some of the most popular emojis across the world, which was how "face with tears of joy" was chosen. This particular emoji made up 20 percent of all the emojis used in the United Kingdom in 2015 (up 4 percent from 2014), as well as 17 percent of those in the United States (up 9 percent from 2014). What is an emoji? It is a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication. The term emoji is a loanword from Japanese, and comes from "picture" for the "e" + "letter, character" for the "moji."
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