‘Selfie’ beats off ‘twerk’ and ‘binge-watch’ as word of 2013

The word “selfie” has has been chosen as the word of 2013. It eclipsed terms like twerk, binge-watch and showrooming.

The selfie — a self-picture — has grown in popularity over recent months as millions of people, including celebrities and even the Pope, have posted them online.

The frequency its use in the English language has increased by 17,000 per cent since this time last year, according to research conducted by Oxford Dictionaries editors.

This figure is calculated by Oxford Dictionaries using a research programme which collects around 150 million English words currently in use from around the web each month.

This software can be used to track the emergence of new words and monitor changes in geography, register, and frequency of use.

Selfie has not yet been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, although it is being considered for future inclusion.

One of the most famous selfies this year was the Pope posing with teenagers at the Vatican. The picture went viral on social media and was widely speculated as being the first ever “Papal selfie”.

A number of spin-off terms are also in circulation, such as helfie (a picture of someone’s hair), belfie (a picture of someone’s behind), welfie (a picture of someone working out) and drelfie (a drunken selfie).

The shortlist for Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013 included binge-watch (to watch multiple episodes of a television programme in rapid succession), showrooming (the practice of examining a product at a shop before buying it online at a lower price) and twerk (dancing in a sexually provocative manner by thrusting hip movements and adopting a low, squatting stance).

Judy Pearsall, editorial director for Oxford Dictionaries, said: “Using the Oxford Dictionaries language research programme, 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.”

She added: “Social media sites helped to popularise the term, with the hashtag #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.”

PA