Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year Oxford Dictionary selects an emoji as the Word of the Year

Oxford Dictionaries announced emoji, commonly known as “Face with Tears of Joy” as its “Word of the Year for 2015”.

• The word emoji is from Japan and is defined as “a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication”.

Every year, the Oxford Dictionaries team review candidates for word of the year and then debates their merits. This year Oxford University Press partnered with mobile technology business SwiftKey to explore frequency and usage statistics for some of the most popular emoji across the world.

• “Face with Tears of Joy” was the most heavily used emoji globally in 2015.
• As per research, character comprised 20% of all emoji used in the UK in 2015 and 17% of all emoji used in the US.