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

Posted by Soulskill on from the it's-too-late-to-complain-but-go-ahead dept.

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).

5 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Let's just throw out all the rules of English then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    "They" as a singular pronoun? What the fuck? We already have a gender-neutral singular pronoun, "it." Oh, but you want to use a pronoun to refer to a person on an unknown gender? We have one for that too, it's "he." No reason to ignore the rules of grammar just because it hurts your feelings. Or, to put it in new-speak, hurts your SJW feels.

  2. Re:Pathetic. by jbmartin6 · · Score: 5, Informative

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

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  3. Re:Hate emojis ... by Dragonslicer · · Score: 3, Informative

    The vast majority of this crap is just enabling third parties to track your fucking email and texts as everyone has to download the stupid things.

    I thought the whole point of the new "emoji" stuff was that they're now standard Unicode characters, so the images are part of the normal fonts on your system. If your computer has to download the image every time someone puts one in a text message, somebody is Doing It Wrong, and it isn't the person sending you the text message.

  4. Re:Let's just throw out all the rules of English t by noldrin · · Score: 3, Informative

    The use of "they" as a singular pronounce dates back to the 15th century and is a generally understood convention, one which is receiving increased use due to increased need to refer to people in a way which is dignified.

  5. Re:Cue the Luddites by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    If Ford were to start selling one kind of car again regardless of where roads may take us today, that's hardly room for praise.

    I dunno... if the past is any indicator, people might go crazy with joy if Ford decided to make it white, remove all but one door, round off all the edges and triple the price.