• Chambers Dictionary – “Overshare”:
The Guardian reported that “‘Overshare’ is Chambers Dictionary’s Word of the Year 2014”. The word refers to excessive disclosure of personal information on social media.
• Collins Dictionary – “Photobomb”:
The Daily Mail reported that “After Receiving Royal Seal of Approval Photobomb Beats Twerk, Tinder, Bakeoff and Normcore to be Named Word of the Year”. The verb refers to the act of appearing in the background of a picture without the subjects’ knowledge. Though the word was first used in 2008, it did not spread till 2012 when a number of photographs that were photobombed went viral on the web. In 2014, the word was linked to many celebrity appearances, including royalty.
• Dictionary.com - “Exposure”:
The choice of this word was justified by linking it to impactful current events: the spread of Ebola, theft of personal information, and violence exposed on the news.
• Oxford Dictionaries – “Vape”:
Having originated as an abbreviation of “vapour” or “vaporize”, the verb refers to inhaling and exhaling the substance given off by an electronic cigarette. Apparently, the use of the word peaked in April when the first “vape café” opened in the UK and New Yorkers protested against a ban on indoor vaping.
• The American Dialect Society - #blacklivesmatter:
Though it does not fit the traditional definition of a word, this hashtag spread like wildfire after the controversial deaths in Missouri and New York recently.
• Global Language Monitor - The heart symbol ♥:
This ideograph, yet another very unconventional “word”, topped the list as it is used daily by billions of people across the world, in different languages. The popularity of such symbols shows how communication technologies are affecting language, as explained by Paul Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor: “The English Language is now undergoing a remarkable transformation unlike any in its 1400 year history — its system of writing, the Alphabet, is gaining characters at amazing rate. These characters are ideographs or pictographs that are called emoji and emoticons. There are about a thousand emoji characters now officially recognized by Unicode Consortium, the official keepers of coding that forms the basis of the Internet.”
One can never overshare on such topics. What will the 2015 word of the year be?
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