In a confusing turn of events, the Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year is not a written word but a heavily used pictograph in today's smartphones. The "face with tears of joy" was chosen from among the other word candidates and was announced by Oxford Dictionaries in its blog on Nov. 16.
It's an interesting move for Oxford and, in trying to find some form of logic behind it; one could even go as far as to justify the choice with the reason that pictographs are an early form of written language. However, not everyone sees humor and logic in its choice and one commenter even asked if Oxford is just being silly or it's really serious with the emoji.
"Word of the Year... is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year," Oxford wrote, and in order to prove this, it partnered with Swiftkey to determine usage statistics of the emojis until the "face with tears of joy" came out as a global winner.
"Why?" is what many are asking and Oxford Dictionaries explained their reason for the choice. "Instead of choosing a traditional word or expression... Oxford Dictionaries has chosen an example of this type of pictographic script to represent the sharp increase in popularity of emojis across the world in 2015," it wrote. They can assure everyone, however, that regardless of the emoji's win, its dictionaries will remain emoji-free.
What makes Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year winner even more puzzling is that it has an interesting selection of actual words shortlisted. These are ad blocker; Brexit, referring to the hypothetical breaking away of the United Kingdom from the European Union; Dark Web; lumbersexual; on fleek; refugee; sharing economy; and, they, which is used to refer to individuals whose sexual preference or gender is unspecified.
It's not only a first time for the publishing company since it began choosing in 2004 for the UK and U.S. Word of the Year; it's also a first across all institutions and organizations that release its own Word of the Year. Such institutions include Merriam-Webster, Macquarie, American Dialect Society, Grant Barrett and the Global Language Monitor.
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