Who knew that shaking your booty provocatively would create such a buzz in 2013?! Or say, clicking your own pictures, that too with your own phone camera? But it didn’t end there. Both the phenomena gave birth to new words! One of the words was also welcomed by the Oxford dictionary editors after people started obsessing with their smartphone cameras. Yes, we are talking about ‘selfie,’ which made smartphones our BFFs and saw us pout like never before! Here are a few more words/ phrases that ruled social media, or should we say our lives, this year.
Selfie: Did you know that the first usage of the word ‘Selfie’ dates back to 2002? While announcing ‘selfie’ as the Word of the Year, Oxford dictionary revealed that it was first used by an Australian drunk who passed out at a party and went on to post a self-portrait on a website. However, ‘selfie’ acquired a cult status only in 2013 with almost everyone taking to their smartphones to click their own photos. Have you tried a selfie yet?
Twerking: It all started in August when Miley Cyrus stepped onto stage wearing a teddy bear one-piece suit while performing at the MTV Video Music Awards 2013. During the show, the singer stripped out of her dress, made lewd gestures with a foam finger and also twerked leaving the audience aghast. Apparently, the word ‘twerk’ has been around for 20 years, but was added to the online version of the Oxford dictionary just recently.
Hashtag: The hash sign (#) has probably never felt so important as it did in 2013. The almost redundant key on the computer keyboard was made popular by social media fanatics especially on Twitter, when they used it to identify messages on a specific topic. Hashtag was introduced on Facebook earlier this year and boy was everyone talking about it. And then #epic happened when it inspired Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon to ridicule the hashtag obsessive generation with this. #Hilarious, we say!
Schmeat: You may like meat a lot, but hearing what this is about may gross you out! The Oxford Dictionary defines it as synthetically-grown meat produced from a soup of antibiotics and foetal bovine serum (ugh!). Who even wants to get close to find out how it tastes?!
Meme: Meme is not really a new word, but it created quite a buzz in 2013 mainly on the Internet. For those of you who didn’t know, meme seems to have originated from the Greek word ‘mimema’, which means “something imitated”. An Internet meme is typically an image/ picture, usually humorous, that spreads rapidly via social networking sites.
Phablet: What happens when you combine two words like phone and tablet? In the age of technology, it gives rise to a brand new device with functions of a smartphone and a tablet. Cool, right? A phablet typically comes with a huge screen (anything between 5 to 6.9 inches). But guess what; phablets first hit the market in 2007!
Squinch: Ever heard of the word ‘Squinch’? The term became very popular over the last one month after photographer Peter Hurley noticed that people would invariably give the wide-eyed look whenever a camera was pointed at them. To solve this, he asked his models to squinch, by simply relaxing their eye muscles and then lowering their upper eyelid slightly.
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Image courtesy: BCCL, Reuters
