The soaring popularity of selfies has helped usage of the word ‘photobomb’ increase 100% to be judged Word of the Year by compilers of the Collins dictionary. The word, which was first recorded in 2008 as the subject of a Google search, is described as, “Intruding on a person’s photo as it is captured, often in the background of the image. This is often accompanied by rude faces and/ or gestures.”
Rival dictionary publisher Chambers names ‘oversharing’, defined as “being unacceptably forthcoming with information about one’s personal life”, as its word of the year, beating ’Yolo’ (which any parent of teenagers will know is short for “you only live once”) to the top spot.
Other contenders for the accolade include ‘bashtag’, a Twitter hashtag used for critical or abusive comments, ‘bridezilla’ – “a woman whose behaviour in planning her wedding is intolerable” – and ‘bakeoff’, which surely has been around for years.
On the business front, new entries include ‘zero hours’ (“An employment contract that requires a worker to be available at certain times but does not obligate the employer to offer them work”) and ‘digital native’ – “A person who has grown up with technology”.
