Author on the Rocks

Blake needs this sweater and so do I.

Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015 is…

Officially called the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji, Oxford Dictionaries has selected a pictograph for the first time ever as Word of the Year.

Emojis have been around since the late 1990s, but 2015 saw their use increase hugely. The ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji was the most used emoji globally in 2015 according to data from mobile technology business SwiftKey. (It makes up 20% of all the emojis used in the UK, and 17% of those in the United States.) Additionally, usage of the word emoji more than tripled in 2015 over the previous year according to data from the Oxford Dictionaries New Monitor Corpus.

And we, errr, made ‘to gif’ (verb) Word of the Year 2012.

they (singular), pronoun: Used to refer to a person of unspecified sex.

It was included on the 2015 shortlist given the ongoing conversation on language in and around the transgender community, specifically regarding third-person pronouns and how a transgender person would like to be addressed. Cisgender and intersectionality were added to the OED in June 2015; Mx. to OxfordDictionaries.com in August 2015; misgender to Oxford Dictionaries.com in August 2014.

Apologies to all our followers if you’re tired of the reblogs and responses. We tend to get over-excited in conversations about language evolving.

With this we’ll wrap up our tumbling on Word of the Year, but you can find plenty of information elsewhere: Oxford Dictionaries.com has a master webpage of information (including video, quiz, poll, and other video); several scholars of English and linguistics discussed emojis in the evolution of language; Simon Horobin discussed the role of emojis in digital communication; Melissa Mohr examined historical precedence for pictographic commentary; and many media outlets have some lively comments – and passionate comment sections.

That thought isn’t helpful right now.

Now is not the time to think about it. I can think about it later.

This is irrational. I’m going to let it go.

I won’t argue with an irrational thought.

This is not an emergency. I can slow down and think clearly about what I need.

This feels threatening and urgent, but it really isn’t.

I don’t have to be perfect to be OK.

I don’t have to figure out this question. The best thing to do is just drop it.

It’s OK to make mistakes.

I already know from my past experiences that these fears are irrational.

I have to take risks in order to be free. I’m willing to take this risk.

It’s OK that I just had that thought/image, and it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t have to pay attention to it.

I’m ready to move on now.

I can handle being wrong.

I don’t have to suffer like this. I deserve to feel comfortable.

That’s not my responsibility.

That’s not my problem.

I’ve done the best I can.

Cimorene goes up to the counter and orders lapsang souchong. The barista gasps. “It’s just not done!” he exclaims. Cimorene causally smashes the patriarchy on her way out the door.

intelligencehavingfun says, “Cimorene, from the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede (super left field, no one has ever heard of this series, which makes me sad) – she took no nonsense from anyone and also ran away to live with dragons, which sounded like the best life ever.”

If you do things that others know about, you will attract a lot of criticism.

People will think you’re wrong a lot. Sometimes you will actually be wrong; sometimes you won’t be.

Sometimes people will be vicious. Sometimes people will try to hurt you as badly as they possibly can.

No matter how well you do things, there will be people who are disgusted by what you do and think you’re a terrible person.

No matter how politically neutral the thing you do is, people will attack it for political reasons. (Either a specific reason, or they’ll say it’s frivolous and that you should be fighting global warming or poverty or something instead.)

If you charge money for what you do, people will be outraged (including people who would never work for free.)

No matter how much you charge, people will angrily tell you that it’s too much.

Even if you work for free, people will be angry with you for addressing some things but not others. Or for not giving them what they want fast enough.

No matter how well you consider other sides, someone will angrily accuse you of censorship or refusing to listen.

And so on and so on. No matter what you do, there are people who will be angry and disgusted by it. There will be people who will hate you. There will be people who try to hurt you to make you stop. This happens to absolutely everyone who does things that a lot of other people know about. It is possible to live with that.

(Part of the way to live with that is by learning to keep perspective in the face of other people’s anger.)

A note about criticism - it’s important to be open to criticism, because sometimes you will be wrong. In order to be truly open to criticism, you have to get past the desire to appease everyone who is mad at you. If you try to please everyone, what ends up happening is that you end up deferring to whoever is the loudest and meanest. Listening to criticism in a good way means you have to be selective — and it also usually means disengaging from jerks.

You don’t have to be perfect to do things that matter. If only perfect people could do things, nothing would ever get done. Everyone who has every done anything has also been flawed in a serious way. Because that’s how people are.

It’s also important to remember that you don’t owe the world a heckler’s veto. There will always be people who don’t like you or your work. That doesn’t mean you have to stop. It doesn’t mean you have to engage with them. It just means that you’re being noticed, and that some people don’t like what they’re seeing.