| 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.
