Now this has cracked us up here at Techjaja, as the Queens language masterfully evolves, we’re all just beast and puppets bending to its many whims. Even the most conservative dictionaries aren’t safe from the power of a linguistic evolution either, and so maybe that’s why Oxford Dictionaries has chosen an emoji as its 2015 word of the year. From the Laughing-Out-Loud / crying-from-happiness emoji — officially known as the Face with Tears of Joy emoji now officially abbreviated as ToJ.
Dictionaries have been choosing annual words of the year for, uh, years, but this year, the Oxford University Press partnered with SwiftKey to determine the most popular emoji from around the world. And the Tears of Joy emoji was the winner. The ToJ’s rise has been a quick one: in 2014, it made up just 4 percent of all emoji used in the UK, and this year that number rose to 20 percent.
Some feel that this whole word of the year thing is just a long con so Oxford Dictionaries could have a conversation with itself. Last year’s word of the year was “vape” and this year, the Oxford University wants to focus us on something we use on a daily basis well at least for some for us who are habitual chatting machines.
