Tears of joy emoticon named ‘word’ of 2015
Oxford Dictionaries has set a new precedent for its word of the year 2015 after judges chose a non-alphabetical symbol for the first time with an emoji.
![emoji, Oxford dictionary emoji, Oxford dictionary](https://thedrum-media.imgix.net/thedrum-prod/s3/news/tmp/10557/emoji_0.jpg?w=300&ar=default&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format)
Eschewing more traditional frontrunners such as ‘Brexit’, ‘refugee’ and ‘ad blocker’ the wordsmiths plumped for the tears of joy smiley face emoticon instead, a symbol which has become synonymous with text messaging over the past year.
Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries, said: “You can see how traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st century communication.
“It's not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps - it's flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully. As a result emoji are becoming an increasingly rich form of communication, one that transcends linguistic borders.
“When Andy Murray tweeted out his wedding itinerary entirely in emoji, for example, he shared a subtle mix of his feelings about the day directly with fans around the world. It was highly effective in expressing his emotions.”
It’s been a great year for the tears of joy emoji with its usage having grown four-fold over the past year in Britain to account for a fifth of all emojis sent after it became the most widely used icon in the world last year, according to research by Oxford University Press and SwiftKey.