Oxford Dictionary’s 2015 word of the year is not a word at all.
It’s an emoji – this happy, yellow, cartoon face shedding two giant tears.
The official name is “face with tears of joy,” usually used as a substitute for “LOL.”
Every year the Oxford Dictionary picks a word that they think captures the year’s biggest trends or changes in the English language.
The organization’s president says emojis are increasingly being used as a substitute for alphabetic scripts due to the fast pace of digital communication.
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