It’s that time of the year again; time to find out what word was so influential in 2013 that Oxford Dictionaries named it Word of the Year.

And the 2013 Word of the Year is… drumroll…SELFIE.

Even though the word selfie, or “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website” first appeared in 2002, it did not become popular until the last couple of years. In the last year alone, the word has increased in frequency in the English language by 17,000 percent. From the famous selfie that Beyonce “photobombed” to First Lady Michelle Obama and the First Dog Bo and even Pope Francis, the selfie has become so mainstream that we believe that it deserves all of the recognition.

Selfie did have to beat out some tough competition in order to gain the title as the Word of the Year. Some of the runners-up included:

binge-watch: (v.) to watch multiple episodes of a television program in rapid succession, typically by means of DVDs or digital streaming.

bitcoin: (n.) a digital currency in which transactions can be performed without the need for a central bank. Also, a unit of bitcoin

showrooming: (n.) the practice of visiting a shop or shops in order to examine a product before buying it online at a lower price.

twerk: (v.) dance to popular music in a sexually proactive manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance.

Check out Oxford Dictionaries infographic about the rise of the selfie below.

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