Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The Oxford Dictionaries has chosen its Word of the Year for 2015: An emoji depicting the “face with tears of joy.”

Oxford Dictionaries cited an explosion in “emoji culture” over the last year as one of the reasons “face with tears of joy” was selected.

“You can see how traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st century communication,” said Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Dictionaries in a statement. “It’s not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps—it’s flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully. As a result emoji are becoming an increasingly rich form of communication, one that transcends linguistic borders.”

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 shortlist was also “they.”...

Oxford Dictionaries announced its latest additions on Wednesday, highlighting the things we were talking about in the summer of ’15—like angry Internet commenters, gender identity and what a sweet time of day “beer o’clock” is.

Oxford Dictionaries is the branch of the Oxford family that focuses on modern language—words that people are using now and how they’re using them—which makes their barriers to entry different than the venerable, historical Oxford English Dictionary. Their new words often arise from fresh technology and pop culture and might include Internet slang (like new entry pwnage) that would get laughed out of the OED’s admittance office.

As with every update, the additions reflect who English-speakers are. Sometimes we are microaggressive brain-farters. At other times we are butthurt pocket-dialers. At others still, we are simply hangry fat-shamers or rando Redditors....