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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).
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!
IDK language is teh suck anymor i h8 wots up.
... making their "dictionary" official...ly useless. Next time someone tries to use it as an authority in conversation, like, "well, the OED says that that word means..." you can shut that fool down by pointing out that they (Oxford) think emoticons are words.
fuck 'em
Aaand, the OED just jumped the shark. Language may evolve, but at some point we need to draw the line - A pictogram does not count as a "word". Why not include Wood's American Gothic? Michaelangelo's statue of David (Or maybe they consider that more appropriate for the Italian dictionary?).
/ Lumbersexual. Nice knowin' ya, OED.
"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.
sad face.
Before the inevitable 60 posts bemoaning the fall of civilization, it's probably worth noting that logographic scripts are very common in the world, and have been used throughout history. What could be more revolutionary, and interesting, in the 21st century to see logographic elements making inroads into languages with alphabetic scripts? Kudos to Oxford!
There are no words for this.
Seriously. This is nuts.
Don't step on the baby.
Why don't you support Unicode you stupid fucks?
I'm surprised singular "they" has only just now made it. I've heard it (and used it myself) since the 1980s.
Times change. Language changes.
...laura
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.
This article explains the difference between emoticons and emoji, emoticons being text only representations of what became pictographs in many of the early IRC and messaging clients, It would seem to me that since they are unicode, one could argue that the latter is simply an extension of the former.
BUTTOCKS
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
No, those are its
If it's in Oxford, it's official. I can stop using "he or she" and just use "they". So much less work. I'm even willing to not be annoyed that emoji are in the dictionary if it means I get this.
What quality separates a series of lines that resemble something in the real world from a series of lines that represent abstract concepts that, when strung together, represent something in the real world? Emoji aren't words because they are more concrete than letters? Personally, I hate emoji. However, having codified meanings for the things that my coworkers use to fill the chat that I am obligated to watch since it occasionally contains work-related content would mean I would spend a lot less time with three of those abstract characters (W, T and F) running through my head.
... the extended middle finger, which has been in use long before the emoji and much more often. (and was my first reaction to this announcement)
Nobody has defined a picture as a word. They've said "the word which denotes a picture used as a word" is a word.
You know: emoji.
You will note that "emoji" is not a picture.
What are you on about? I bet your mother knows what an emoji is ... which is probably why it became a word of the year.
You might as well complain we have the word statue, because a statue isn't a word either.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Could we have UTF-8, please, on Slashdot? If not for emoji, then for characters in non-European languages? I know people have been asking for this for years now - it's embarrassing.
Sorry, I forgot there are ads on the Web; I use Lynx.
This is a unicode code point, 1F602 specifically. Your user-agent doesn't download the resource, it is like any other character and rendered with your local font assuming it has a glyph for this code point.
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.
I really don't get the trend of adding the suffix "-sexual" to lifestyle choices that have nothing to do with sexuality.
"Metrosexual" makes just as little sense, but it's older so I guess we've accepted it.
That person that you're calling an idiot for using pictures as words wants you to get off their lawn. After all, their language is a couple thousand years older than yours.
"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?
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.
Android has come with emojis as a system resource since 4.1 (and I assume iOS has had them built-in for similarly as long). You don't download them (and certainly not each time ... that would be incredibly weird). You can be reassured that no bandwidth has been wasted by the world (at least, not as far as emojis are concerned). (And using them as trackers? Seriously? Most apps easily have the permissions to track their users without ever having to resort to emoji-based methods, even if emoji-tracking was even possible ...)
That said, I think that emojis are ugly, stupid and are dumbing down communication. The OED has lost any remaining credibility if it's adding emoji as words (god help us all), and it can get off my lawn.
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.
Nobody has defined a picture as a word. They've said "the word which denotes a picture used as a word" is a word.
From TFS:
the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a pictograph
Better luck next time.
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
Smilies and emoticons ?
Boss: Everyone gather round. Listen, guys, this new line of Merriam-Webster-brand phosphorescent butt plugs is killing us! If we want to stay relevant in the twenty-first century, we have to innovate, people! Who has some forward-thinking ideas for our next edition?
Worker 1: What if started a FaceBook account for every word in the dictionary?
Worker 2: What if we used a different color of ink for every part of speech? No, wait, a different scent!
Worker 3: What if we started calling ourselves OXDIC.com?
Boss: Yes, perfect, these are all great ideas. Henderson, what's your idea? Henderson? Hey, where's Henderson?
Worker 1: I think he's in his cube writing definitions.
Boss: Okay, I'll fire Henderson after the meeting. Meanwhile, here's my idea, and it's a beaut: the Word of the Year is a cartoon picture of a taco.
Workers: Brilliant, boss!... Great work!... Our storied tradition of excellence is preserved!...
Everybody knows that the Ancient Egyptians are using the Japanese people as pawns in their Illuminati style conspiracy to reintroduce hieroglyphics. First it's emojis and the next thing you know, everything will be drawn as pictures on stone tablets and papyrus.
So is Swifkey logging everything their users type? How come they know these statistics? Disturbing.
Oh, I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay,
I sleep all night and I work all day.
Have gnu, will travel.
Have gnu, will travel.
No, that's not true at all. Spoken words are comprised of 0 letters or characters, they are comprised only of sounds (phones). Other languages have fully-ideographic written forms.
I would say it differently: a word is something with at least one widely-used verbal representation (making allowances for accents, variation in voice, and tomato-"tomahto" differences).
We generally don't consider a real-life smile a word, even though that's a well-understood form of visual communication. The middle finger or "okay" hand-sign isn't a word either, even though they have different meanings in different cultures, just like regular words.
Of course, by that argument I think ":)" is, arguably, a word, with a less-used variant spelling of "smiley".
we had the graphic emoticons on instant messengers, and that was before the turn of the century. Before that (since September '82) using ASCII text, like :-)
Ohhh wait, but just like patents, now it's "on a mobile device" and it's suddenly new?
I'm pretty sure there are actual poop emojis.
The standard Unicode poop emoji is U+1F4A9
In most renderings I've seen it's actually smiling!
Back to cave walls? I guess we're fueling the future of archeology.
My phone has been stuck on 4.0.4 for years and will be stuck there forever, you insensitive so-and-so. Android - ya want a new windshield wiper, ya gotta buy a new model car.
I've been using "they" that way my whole life. It's not to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. It's just a common way people use that word, and part of how I grew up speaking. Glad OED has finally caught up with me.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
So, I guess the Chinese and Japanese have been wrong all this time, then? The Japanese variant is called Kanji and I am on my phone just now so I don't feel like looking what the Chinese is called at the moment. What? You think these emoji are somehow different?
I'm actually surprise that "they (singular)" wasn't already in the dictionary, and never really understood why some people opposed it. It sure beats all of the debates over using "he/she", or people saying that the use of "he" or "she" is not meant to imply gender, or people arguing that "it" is valid or disrespectful. Not only is "they (singular)" in common use, there is enough redundancy in the English language that you can figure out whether it is singular or plural, it avoids the politics of "he/she", it does not require explanations of inclusivity, and it does not use a word that is typically associated with inanimate objects.
According to http://dictionary.reference.co..., it's been used that way for centuries. This isn't anything new.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
No, from what I gather they used 'Dictionaries' properly. I don't know if it is the whole company or just a division, but apparently it is part of the name of the organization that is responsible for all the different dictionaries the company publishes.
Emodium is used to treat visual diarrhoea caused by Emoji abuse.
... now everybody is talking about the Oxford Dictionary. Many people had spend time discussing about this, and now we know that exist a "Oxford Dictionary Word of the year".
My phone has been stuck on 4.0.4 for years and will be stuck there forever, you insensitive so-and-so. Android - ya want a new windshield wiper, ya gotta buy a new model car.
http://forum.xda-developers.co...
Fixed that for you. Android -- ya want a new windshield wiper, ya gotta install it yourself. But at least it's open and free.
So, I guess the Chinese and Japanese have been wrong all this time, then?
Actually, yes. The amount of time wasted learning Kanji in Japanese schooling is nuts, IMO. And the affect on literacy is similarly appalling -- you can't even read a newspaper without completing secondary school, because of the need to memorise all those characters.
I'm a big fan of Japan switching over completely to hiragana. One simple phonetic alphabet for everything, anyone with a couple of years of primary school ed. can read, what's not to like? Kanji is seriously holding Japan back.
Just my two yen.