'Selfie' Named Word of the Year

The Oxford English Dictionary has chosen "selfie" as the word of the year 2013, the BBC said Tuesday.

The word, defined as "a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website," has been in use since 2002, and its frequency in the English language increased 170 times this year compared to 2012, according to the dictionary editors.

The editors collected and analyzed 150 million words on the Internet every month to find new and popular words popping up in the world.

"Chav," referring to "a young lower-class person typified by brash and loutish behavior and the wearing of (real or imitation) designer clothes" was the word of the year 2004, "credit crunch" of 2008, and "omnishambles" (a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations) in 2012.