The Word of the Year is Selfie

Written By Funchum on Friday, September 26, 2014 | 9:29:00 PM

The word "Selfie" was declared Word of the Year among other 12 nominees at the recently held Sawikaan 2014.

Selfie was also the Oxford Word of the Year for 2013, the term means a self portrait photograph typically taken  with a hand-held digital camera or a smartphone. Selfies are often shared on different social networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram.

First Known Selfie, taken by
Robert Cornelius in 1939

According to CNN, the earliest usage of the word selfie was in 2002, in an Australian chat room to describe an undignified scene.

Selfie beat other 12 competitors including hastag, pdaf, imba and peg. For Full list of Word of the Year Nominees, click here .

Earlier this year, Makati and Pasig was named as the Selfie Capital of the World by the Time Magazine. With 258 selfie takers per 100,000 people.

The words that were chosen before were canvass (2004), jueteng (2005), lobat (2006), miskol (2007), jejemon (2010)  and wangwang (2012).

According to Sawikaan, the nomination of the words is base on its popularity and have resulted a big influence in the political, socio-cultural, economic and other aspects that involves or influence Filipino life. Also, the word may be an old which developed a new meaning or may be borrowed from foreign languages.