A suffix, an emoji among 2015's top words

'Microaggression', 'identity' and 'binge-watch' are some of the top words of 2015 named by various dictionaries and language monitoring groups with the list also including the suffix 'ism' and an emoji.

Collins Dictionary was the first to announce its word of the year when on November 5, 2015 it named 'binge-watch', which means to watch a large number of television programmes (especially all the shows from one series) in succession.

A few days later on November 17, Oxford Dictionaries announces the emoji, commonly known as 'Face with Tears of Joy', as its word of 2015. Instead of choosing a traditional word, Oxford Dictionaries selected a pictograph to reflect the sharp increase in popularity of emoji across the world last year.

On December 8, encapsulating the most robust fields of language evolution and user interest in 2015, Dictionary.Com named 'identity' as its top word.

For the first time, Merriam-Webster named on December 15 the suffix 'ism' as its 2015 word of the year, reflecting the fact that many of its highest ranking words in the year had one thing in common: they ended in -ism.

Then on December 28, Global Language Monitor (GLM) announced that its top word was 'microaggression', an academic term related to the 'white privilege' movement that has moved into widespread circulation over the last generation.

Collins chose 'binge-watch' over words like 'Dadbod', 'Shaming', 'Corbynomics', 'Clean eating', 'Ghosting', 'Swipe', 'Contactless', 'Manspreading' and 'Transgender'. The usage of 'binge-watch' was up 200 per cent on 2014.

Every year, the Oxford Dictionaries team reviews candidates for word of the year and then debates their merits, eventually choosing one that captures the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year.
Although emojis have been a staple of texting teens for

some time, emoji culture exploded into the global mainstream over the past couple of years.

Whether it was Hillary Clinton soliciting feedback in emoji or ongoing debates about the skin tone of smiley faces, emojis have come to embody a core aspect of living in a digital world that is visually driven, emotionally expressive, and obsessively immediate.

Says Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Dictionaries, "You can see how traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st century communication. It's not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps - it's flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully. As a result emojis are becoming an increasingly rich form of communication, one that transcends linguistic borders."

Emoji is a loanword from Japanese defined as 'a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication'. It was used in English-language Japanese publications as early as 1997 but remained rare outside of Japanese contexts until 2011, when Apple launched iOS 5 with emoji support.

Since then, usage of the word emoji has soared as English speakers have embraced the symbols to supplement communication in texts and online, more than tripling from 2014 to 2015.

The emoji was chosen over words like 'ad blocker', 'Brexit', 'Dark Web', 'lumbersexual', 'on fleek', 'refugee', 'sharing economy' and 'they'.

Merriam-Webster's word of the year was determined using two simple criteria: the words must show a high volume of lookups and a significant year-over-year increase in lookups at Merriam-Webster.Com. Seven words ending in '-ism' triggered both high volume and significant year-over-year increase in lookups at Merriam-Webster.Com. - socialism, fascism, racism, feminism, communism, capitalism and terrorism.