Oxford Dictionaries has named ‘selfie’ ‘Word of the Year’ for 2013

OXFORD, WE NEED TO HAVE A WORD ABOUT ‘SELFIE’... The ‘Word of the Year’ reflects a contemporary crisis of judgement. .spiked-online.com

Extract: The announcement that Oxford Dictionaries has named ‘selfie’ ‘Word of the Year’ for 2013, has been met with an inevitable outpouring of outrage and snarkiness.

For those who are either allergic to the internet or merely have better things to do than prowl Instagram all day, ‘selfie’ refers to taking a photo of yourself – usually on a smartphone – which is then, customarily, uploaded to a social-media site. It’s believed to have been coined by an Australian student in 2002. He snapped a photo of the busted lip he suffered due to a sozzled fall, and uploaded it online with the caption ‘…sorry about the focus, it was a selfie’. In the last year, the term has really caught on – even the pope’s been at it – and Oxford Dictionaries calculates its usage across the internet has increased a whopping 17,000 per cent. .spiked-online.com