The good ole' dictionary!

Remember the days when almost every home, had an Oxford Dictionary? It was like the bible for anyone seeking to improve their English language. Almost every child of that generation will recall how they were given a task – every day they had to check one new word in the dictionary, look up its meaning, diction and actually try and use it during the day. Today, we have spell checks and online Thesaurus. So flipping through pages and pages, for one word, in the process, leaning a few new ones, is lost.

So for all those who know and can relate to Oxford Dictionary, surely you know that one new word is added to the dictionary, every year. Their wide range of researchers, keep a track of news words coming into the language – they need to get evidence that a new term is being used in a variety of different sources (not just by one writer). It then becomes a candidate for inclusion in one of its dictionaries. For every new dictionary or online update, it assesses all the most recent terms that have emerged and select those which they judge to be the most significant or important, likely to stand the test of time.

This year, the new word added is Emoji. An emoji means “face with tears of joy”. Last year, the word of the year was “vape”; it was “Selfie” in 2013 and in 2012, it was “GIF”.

Other words and expressions that made the 2015 Word of the Year shortlist: Ad blocker, Dark Web, lumbersexual, on fleek, refugee, Brexit, and sharing economy. A curious entry into the short list was also “they” – this is with reference to people with non-binary gender identities (that is, people who identify as neither male or female).