Long before — well about three weeks before — Denmark’s Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt snapped the now-(in)famous ‘selfie’ of herself, British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama during the memorial service of Nelson Mandela, unbeknownst to me, Oxford Dictionaries named ‘selfie’ International Word of the Year 2013 defining it as follows:
selfie noun, informal
(also selfy; plural selfies)
a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a Smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website
Being the Smartphone, Twitter, Instagram, etc. nerd that I am, I only started hearing and reading about selfie after the right-wing-manufactured “selfie scandal” which our Editor-in-Chief rightly calls “disgusting.”
The word selfie is so new that it does not appear in any of my hardcopy dictionaries. So, when I used the word in a couple of recent posts I had to rely on the internet (e.g. Google) to find the correct spelling.
I saw both “selfy” and “selfie.” Since selfie looks more like the plural, I used selfy, but the editors of one publication quickly changed it to selfie.
No problem, Oxford says “also selfy.”
But what is interesting is some of the background on this “new” word:
Oxford Dictionaries notes that selfie is a word or expression that has attracted a great deal of interest during the year to date and that language research conducted by its editors reveals that the frequency of the word selfie in the English language has increased by 17,000% since [November] last year.
Also, that selfie can be traced back to 2002 when it was used in an Australian online forum post:
2002 ABC Online (forum posting) 13 Sept.
“Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped ofer [sic] and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.”
Oxford Dictionaries:
The word gained momentum throughout the English-speaking world in 2013 as it evolved from a social media buzzword to mainstream shorthand for a self-portrait photograph. Its linguistic productivity is already evident in the creation of numerous related spin-off terms showcasing particular parts of the body like helfie (a picture of one’s hair) and belfie (a picture of one’s posterior); a particular activity – welfie (workout selfie) and drelfie (drunken selfie), and even items of furniture – shelfie and bookshelfie.
How was selfie selected as the Word of the Year?
Judy Pearsall, Editorial Director for Oxford Dictionaries, explains: “Using the Oxford Dictionaries language research programme, which collects around 150 million words of current English in use each month, we can see a phenomenal upward trend in the use of selfie in 2013, and this helped to cement its selection as Word of the Year.”
Selfie was added to OxfordDictionaries.com in August 2013 and was declared Word of the Year in November 2013.
Finally, “the rise of selfie”:
Judy Pearsall explains the evolution of the word selfie: “Social media sites helped to popularize the term, with the tag ‘selfie’ appearing on the photo-sharing website Flickr as early as 2004, but usage wasn’t widespread until around 2012, when selfie was being used commonly in mainstream media sources.
“In early examples, the word was often spelled with a -y, but the -ie form is more common today and has become the accepted spelling. The use of the diminutive -ie suffix is notable, as it helps to turn an essentially narcissistic enterprise into something rather more endearing. Australian English has something of a penchant for -ie words – barbie for barbecue, firie for firefighter, tinnie for a can of beer – so this helps to support the evidence for selfie having originated in Australia.”
Thought you would like to know.
To see which other words made the Word of the Year (WOTY) shortlist in addition to bitcoin, olinguito and, you guessed it, twerk, and to find previous years’ WOTY, please go here.
As the lead selfie intimates, Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to all us selfies
Image: www.shutterstock.com
