The Oxford Dictionaries word of the year isn’t a word at all!

That’s right – for the first time ever, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a pictograph: officially called the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji, though you may know it by other names. There were other strong contenders from a range of fields but the image was chosen as the ‘word’ that best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015.

* Emojis (the plural can be either emoji or emojis) have been around since the late 1990s, but 2015 saw their use, and use of the word emoji, increase hugely.