Word Of The Year May Leave You In ‘Tears Of Joy’

Word of the year

How often do you use this emoji tears of joy?

Apparently enough to make it Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year.

For the first time ever, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is not a word—it’s tears of joy, officially meaning the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’. Why? It reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of people across the globe in 2015, according to Oxford Dictionaries.

Emojis have been embraced by people as a nuanced form of expression to communicate across language barriers—they have become a shorthand form of communicating thoughts, emotions and responses.

And that’s not just reserved for teens. They’re popular among all generations and diverse backgrounds, politicians and celebrities alike. Even Hillary Clinton has solicited feedback in the form of emojis for one of her tweets:

And clearly no longer are emojis confined to text messages either, now you can find them in dictionaries.

But why this emoji tears of joy and not emoji? Oxford University Press collaborated with leading mobile technology SwiftKey for frequency and usage statistics and found that Tears of Joy emoji is the most globally popular emoji in 2015. It made up 20% of all the emojis used in the UK and 17% in the US.

Emojis have been around since 1997, but their usage tripled in 2015 as they became popular in text messages, according to Oxford Dictionaries Corpus.

The word emoji originated from the Japanese language meaning ‘picture character’. Similarly, in English language the word emoticon means ‘a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication’. The resemblance of the two words made emoji easily memorable and led to the rise of its popularity as a term.

tears of joy topped the shortlist of contenders, such as ‘on fleek’, ‘refugee’ and ‘lumbersexual’.

 

shortlist-emoji-contenders

Slma SHELBAYAHSlma Shelbayah is an award-winning Broadcast Journalist and CEO of Shelbayah Consulting. She is a Producer/Assignment Editor for CNN and also a writer for CNN.com. Her career includes breaking news coverage with CNN International, spanning the regions of the Middle East, Asia and Africa and varying across national and international topics including stories covering Arab and Muslim Diasporas. Ms. Shelbayah is also an Adjunct Professor of Business and Mass Communication at Brenau University where she teaches numerous courses including International Business Communication, Writing and Critical Thinking, Art of Leadership and Cross-Cultural Business Conflict Resolution. Website: www.slmashelbayah.com; Twitter: @SlmaCNN

Facebook Comments

Related Posts

Comments

Do not miss