"Selfie" Named Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year

Old School Selfie

Female college students have been perfecting them since the early aughts, but not until now has "selfie" been recognized by the Oxford Dictionaries.

Defined as "a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a Smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website", selfie today earned the designation of the international Word of the Year 2013.

Use of the phrase, according to Oxford Dictionaries' language research, has skyrocketed 17,000 percent since this time last year — when "GIF" was bestowed the Word of the Year honor.

Superman Selfie (lol)

The first known case of the word "selfie" dates back to 2002, when an unidentified Australian posted to an ABC Online forum a self-portrait image of a busted lip. "And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie," the photographer wrote.

Social media sites have helped to proliferate the term, which popped up on photo-sharing site Flickr as early as 2004, according to Judy Pearsall, editorial director for Oxford Dictionaries. Widespread usage began around 2012, when mainstream media sources began dropping "selfie" into news stories.

The word really gained momentum this year among English speakers, evolving from another social media buzzword into mainstream shorthand. Though much less prevalent, Oxford Dictionaries reported spin-off terms that read like the lineup of Snow White's dwarves: "selfie" (a picture of one's hair), "belfie" (picture of one's butt), "welfie" (workout selfie), and “drelfie" (drunken selfie).

Early examples often spelled the word with a –y, but the –i.e. form is more common today, Pearsall explained. "The use of the diminutive –i.e. suffix is notable, as it helped to turn an essentially narcissistic enterprise into something rather more endearing," she said in a statement.

Selfie was added to OxfordDictionaries.com in August, and is currently being considered for inclusion in the more formal Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

"Selfie" isn't the only tech-savvy term on this year's Word of the Year shortlist — The Oxford Dictionaries committee also considered "binge-watch," "bitcoin," and "showrooming," which is the practice of visiting a brick-and-mortar store to browse before ultimately purchasing a product online at a cheaper cost.

Also chewed over: "bedroom tax" (a U.K. term for a reduction in housing benefits if a renter's property has more bedrooms than necessary), "olinguito" (the smallest member of the raccoon family, found in mountain forests in Colombia and Ecuador), "schmeat" (a form of meat produced synthetically from biological tissue), and, of course, "twerk" (a sexually provocative dance recently popularized by Miley Cyrus).