HA! Oxford’s word of the year isn’t even a word — it’s an emoji. And it’s arguably the best and the most used emoji — the Face With Tears of Joy emoji, aka the I’m-crying-I’m-laughing-so-hard face.
According to Oxford University Press, it chose the emoji as 2015’s word of the year because it “best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015.”
“This year Oxford University Press have partnered with leading mobile technology business SwiftKey to explore frequency and usage statistics for some of the most popular emoji across the world, and Face With Tears of Joy was chosen because it was the most used emoji globally in 2015,” the publisher explained. “SwiftKey identified that Face With Tears of Joy made up 20 percent of all the emojis used in the UK in 2015, and 17 percent of those in the US: a sharp rise from 4 percent and 9 percent respectively in 2014. The word ‘emoji’ has seen a similar surge: Although it has been found in English since 1997, usage more than tripled in 2015 over the previous year according to data from the Oxford Dictionaries Corpus.”
Last year, it’s selection was equally as trendy. The 2014 Word of the Year was “vape” — as in an electronic cig or to "inhale and exhale the vapour produced by an electronic cigarette or similar device."
Tell Us: Which emoji do you use most?
