Oxford Dictionaries have chosen the emoji officially called the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ as their Word of the Year.
An emoji is the official name for the now ubiquitous yellow pictograms used as a shorthand to expressing emotion on social media. This is the first time a pictogram has been so honoured, and Oxford University Press’ partnership with virtual keyboard company Swiftkey to find the Word is presumably coincidental. The other nominees were: ‘sharing economy’, ‘they’, ‘on fleek’, ‘ad blocker’, ‘refugee’, ‘brexit’, ‘dark web’ and ‘lumbersexual’.