‘Selfie’ is the Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2013

This is how words are born.

In 2002, an Australian man went to his “mate’s� 21st birthday party. He got drunk, tripped on some steps and cut his lip. He took a picture of his injuries and shared it with his friends on an online forum.

“And sorry about the focus,� he wrote, “it was a selfie.�

That was the first recorded use of the word “selfie,� according to the word mavens at the Oxford Dictionaries, who research such things.

On Tuesday, the Oxford Dictionaries declared “selfie� the word of the year for 2013, in honor of the relatively young coinage having taken over the world thanks to millions of smartphone self-portraits and the resulting shares in social media.

In 2004, two years after that blitzed Aussie coined the neologism, the word had spread enough that Flickr created the hashtag #selfie on its website. But research by Oxford Dictionaries editors found that the frequency of “selfie� in the English language has increased by 17,000% since this time last year.

“The word gained momentum throughout the English-speaking world in 2013 as it evolved from a social media buzzword to mainstream shorthand for a self-portrait photograph,� Oxford Dictionaries wrote in a news release. “Its linguistic productivity is already evident in the creation of numerous related spin-off terms showcasing particular parts of the body like helfie (a picture of one’s hair) and belfie (a picture of one’s posterior); a particular activity -- welfie (workout selfie) and drelfie (drunken selfie), and even items of furniture -- shelfie and bookshelfie.�

Selfie was the top word on a shortlist of trendy new words and expressions on the Oxford list that included a few others that seem likely to endure.

“Binge-watch,� which is what a lot of people did when the series “Breaking Bad� was ending (“watch multiple episodes of a television program in rapid succession�) and “bitcoin� (a digital currency) may be with us for a long time. But I’m not to sure “showrooming� is widespread enough to have much life as a coinage (it means “the practice of visiting a shop or shops in order to examine a product before buying it online at a lower price.�)

And the jury may still be out on “twerk,� which means to “dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance.�

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