Emoji je beseda leta 2015 po izboru Oxford Dictionaries. Emoji od leta 1999 počasi a vztrajno pridobivajo na popularnosti in pri Oxford University Press, ki izdaja Oxford English Dictionary in Oxford Dictionaries Online so se letos odločili, da bo prav emoji zmagovalna beseda. Beseda emoji je sicer v OED and Oxford Dictionaries Online prisotna šele od leta 2013.
Obrazložitev je bila sledeča »Although emoji have been a staple of texting teens for some time, emoji culture exploded into the global mainstream over the past year,” the company’s team wrote in a press release. “Emoji have come to embody a core aspect of living in a digital world that is visually driven, emotionally expressive, and obsessively immediate.«
V partnerstvudružbo SwiftKey so poiskali tudi najbolj uporabljen emoji letošnjega leta in po njihovih podatkih je to »obraz s solzami sreče«, poznan tudi kot LOL Emoji ali smejoči emoji, ki obsega skoraj 20% vseh emojijev uporabljenih v ZDA in Veliki Britaniji.
V ožji izbor pa so prišle še besede:
ad blocker, noun: A piece of software designed to prevent advertisements from appearing on a web page.
Brexit, noun: A term for the potential or hypothetical departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union.
Dark Web, noun: The part of the World Wide Web that is only accessible by means of special software, allowing users and website operators to remain anonymous or untraceable
lumbersexual, noun: a young urban man who cultivates an appearance and style of dress (typified by a beard and checked shirt) suggestive of a rugged outdoor lifestyle
on fleek, adjective: extremely good, attractive, or stylish
refugee, noun: A person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster
sharing economy, noun: An economic system in which assets or services are shared between private individuals, either free or for a fee, typically by means of the Internet.
they (singular), pronoun: Used to refer to a person of unspecified sex.