‘GIF’ named word of the year by Oxford American Dictionary
 

It's been delighting people around the world for 25 years but now formally holds a honored place in the cultural lexicon: "GIF" has been chosen as word of the year by the Oxford American Dictionary.
"GIF celebrated a lexical milestone in 2012, gaining traction as a verb, not just a noun," said Katherine Martin, head of the U.S. dictionaries program at Oxford.
"The GIF has evolved from a medium for pop-cultural memes into a tool with serious applications including research and journalism, and its lexical identity is transforming to keep pace."
GIF is, in fact, an abbreviation of three separate words: Graphics Interchange Format. It was first released by CompuServe in 1987 but has experienced a dramatic cultural resurgence in recent years, most commonly used to make humorous commentary on topics ranging from sports to the 2012 presidential election.
The runner-up for the word of the year was also an abbreviation, "YOLO," which stands for "You only live once."
"Superstorm" was another runner-up for word of the year, after the major storm that affected the Eastern U.S. during the first week of November.
The British Oxford Dictionaries went a different route, choosing "omnishambles," as their word of the year, which is defined as "a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations."
Needless to say, having all three words shows how neologisms are having a growing influence in the cultural landscape.
Still, some older words have found new linguistic relevance. "Pleb," taken from the Roman word "plebs," has found a modern context in its derogatory usage to describe "a member of the ordinary people or working classes."
Interestingly, the word-of the-year distinction does not guarantee that the chosen words will actually be included in future editions of the Oxford English Dictionary.

‘GIF’ named word of the year by Oxford American Dictionary | The Sideshow - Yahoo! News

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