It beat off stiff competition from the likes of twerk, binge-watch and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
The prestigious word of the year award has been handed out, and the winner is the term that we’ve all been using non-stop, selfie.
The lads at The Guardian have credited a “young drunk” in Australia as the first person to coin the term, and it caught on like wildfire with the kids what do be using the internet with their Instagram and the Twitter and that carry on.
The first appearance was a blog that a young Australian wrote in 2002, after they fell over at a party while drunk, landed on a set of steps and their teeth went through their lip, leaving quite a big hole. The obvious reaction was to take a picture of themselves and post it up on the internet, calling it a ‘selfie’, and thus the term was born.
According to professional word scientician Katherine Martin, who’s the editor of the Oxford Dictionary, it fits with the Australain tendency to make short words with the ‘ie’ ending, like barbie and tinnie.
Other terms in contention were the likes of twerk (for the best example see the works of Miley Cyrus), showrooming, where you go to a shop and then buy what you were looking at online, and binge-watch, where you watch a load of episodes of your favourite series in a row. We called that an omnibus in JOE’s day. So what are your suggestions for alternative word of the year?
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