“Selfie” has officially been recognized as word of the year for 2013 according to Oxford Dictionaries.
The digital and social media age has influenced many of us to take pictures of our delicious meals, check in everywhere we go, embarrass our friends in photos we tag them in online, and even “selfies” of ourselves.
Oxford defines this 21st century word as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.” According to Oxford, the word “selfie” originated in Australia back in 2002 when a guy took a photo of himself to show his friends the hole he got on his bottom lip after he landed on a set of steps while drunk at a party. The guy posted the photo in a chat room online and wrote, “I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.”
Who would’ve thought the word was the result from a drunken night?
