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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!
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.
sad face.
Actually, the OED is still a respectable scholarly work. This is just an offshoot that picks interesting words every year as a kind of PR stunt, and to show that they are actively studying language rather than just collecting words.
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).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
Dark day for intelligence when these stupid emojis are given "word" status...
Now maybe thousand-word status since a picture is supposedly worth a thousand words...
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.
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!
It's probably worth noting that at one point the Ford Motor company only made one car (The Model T), and while the concept of automobiles and transportation has endured throughout history, the concept of one way to do it has long died, along with the kitsch of a crank-start car (a.k.a. using pictures to communicate)
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. At some point a person with half a brain is going to ask the all-important what-the-fuck-were-you-thinking question that clearly wasn't asked at Oxford when adopting a picture as a word.
The "inroads" that brought logographic scripts into existence were born from ignorance, and there's a reason they have died off throughout history. We have words for that shit now.
They're called rednecks.
"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 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.