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The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015 Is an Emoji (oxforddictionaries.com)

AmiMoJo writes: For the first time ever, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a pictograph (that Slashdot is unable to reproduce), officially called the 'Face with Tears of Joy' emoji (U+1F602). Oxford University Press have partnered with SwiftKey to explore frequency and usage statistics for some of the most popular emoji across the world. Emoji is a Japanese word (pronounced "eh-mo-jee"), originating from Japanese mobile service providers who all had their own unique set before they were standardized in Unicode. Other notable words this year include "ad blocker," "Brexit" (British exit from the EU), lumbersexual and "they (singular)" (pronoun to refer to a person of unspecified sex).

6 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Oxford gets it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    The modern app appers at Oxford know that only apps can app apps, which is why they're apping Emoji apps so we can app other apps using Emojis!

    Apps!

  2. and so my transition began. by nimbius · · Score: 3, Funny

    Until reading this article Id been a chipper young admin, fast at the keyboard with a gentle hand to users but once I'd gazed upon this fact, this indelible pockmark upon our society in this foul year of our lord 2015, My hair burst a radiant white and a shock of that same hue flew throught the beard I never before had. Hair filled my nostrils and a pocket protector flew furiously into my button up homage to the cartesian plane. small stuffed tux's and beasties fell from the heavens unto my cubicle and a smattering of old userfriendly comics printed upon delicate tractor paper adhered themselves to the walls. my mundane gaze turned slowly into a furious scowl and I knew what must be done. I furiously cranked out a script to sync microsoft ldap parameters to my desktop for my user, configured NIS, and reverted every account in the organization to csh. I then forwarded my phone to the switchboad and the switchboard to a cream cheese factory in wisconsin. Gathering my briefcase now filled with LISA digests and a calculator from the cold war I made my way to the pub for the day and silently muttered

    "Kids....Kids on my lawn..."

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
  3. Re:Pathetic. by PvtVoid · · Score: 3, Funny

    I would be glad to, but they generally don't use English which is what the E in OED stands for

    Use emoji. They'll get the gist of it.

  4. Re:F : A - I ( L by bigfinger76 · · Score: 3, Funny

    They're called rednecks.

  5. He's a lumberjack and he's OK by rossdee · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Lumbersexual is a new one to me. Apparently it's someone who grooms and dresses to appear like a person who spends a lot of time outdoors (like a lumberjack I guess)."

    Put on womens clothing and hang around in bars?

  6. Re:It's A Dark Day For Oxford by mythosaz · · Score: 1, Funny

    Crazy, the idea of a pictograph being used to represent a word....