I learned this from listening to NPR this morning:
Good morning. I’m Renee Montagne announcing the word of the year: Selfie. The Smartphone self-portrait. The Oxford Dictionary says it perfectly captures 2013. Selfies lit up social media and dirty ones derailed political careers. Teens even took one with the Pope. The word’s come a long way since popping up on an Australian message board a decade ago. It beat out binge watch, meaning marathon TV watching, and twerk. You can look that one up.
But what really made me enjoy the news was this Tweet from NASA’s Curiosity Rover:
By the way, as a guy who has had occasion to shoot a number of pictures of himself over the years, what with blogging and the avatars needed for social media, I really don’t like the way that word sounds.
Does it strike anyone else as odd — and even ominous, in terms of the course of our civilisation (yes, I spelled it that way on purpose) — that the OED would make an announcement about the Word of the Year by way of video? And not even a well-done video….
I agree with you about the sound of the word–it’s a little obscene.
Would you prefer – twerk?