Wordy Wednesday: The Oxford English Dictionary 2013 Word of the Year

The Oxford English Dictionary is a hugely influential and important publication in the English language. It's one of the largest and most comprehensive dictionaries, in any language, in the world. One aspect which makes the OED stand out is its ability acknowledge language as a changing, malleable entity. Language changes because time passes and people change. Society shifts, history happens. The words we use go in and out of fashion, sometimes as quickly as our fashion sense. The OED is quite expansive, and continues to grow each year, even if only by a word or two.

2013 was a remarkable year for social media people have shared their life experiences incredibly easily online, even from their cell phones, in ways we would have never imagined even twenty years ago. Photographs used to be an expensive undertaking that required a skilled professional to frame, shoot, and print. That is still the case; it takes a a great deal of practice and know-how to make a formal photograph look just right. But less formal photos have taken the world by storm. Advances in digital photography have pushed cameras to get smaller and smaller; we can even carry them around in our pockets. The latest smartphones have built-in camera capabilities that have eliminated the need some people might have for a camera altogether.

With the advent of Facebook and Twitter, people all over the world can access and communicate personal happenings and news articles with the click of a button. Thanks to smart phone applications like Instagram and Vine, it's incredibly easy to document your life via photos or even video. If I look at my own Instagram account, I've taken 1,176 photos over the past three years. Looking back over them brings up specific memories and moments that make me smile. Paging through my Instagram account online is very much like paging through one of my family's photo albums.

The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a word or expression that has attracted a great deal of interest during the year to date. According the Oxford Dictionaries blog, use of the word selfie has increased monumentally in 2013something like 17,000%. Selfie is presently being considered for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary. Language researchers acknowledge it has been phenomenally popular, which is part of what helped it be selected for Word of the Year.

What is a selfie? It's derived from self portrait and has come into common practice by popularity. Because it's become so simple to use these social media apps to photograph and document our lives, people have got in the habit of snapping many more pictures of themselves than ever before. Pictures of themselves in a new outfit in the bathroom mirror, or out with friends celebrating a new promotion selfies are photos we take of ourselves and share with our friends online.

Now I'll admit, I don't take a lot of selfies. I had to search a little through my Instagram feed to find this one. But that's just me. There are folks out there who love to take them all the time. People use selfies to document their vacations"I told you I've been to the Eiffel Tower!"and their day to day experiences"This is me and the new water cooler." If you haven't ever taken a selfie, this might be the moment to put the Word of the Year to good use. Maybe you're already a seasoned pro and taking quick snaps of yourself is old hat. If you've got a great selfie, share it in the comments below.