Selfie, rizz, vax: Why a word can define a year

"It's hard to get something that will speak to everyone's experience".

The team behind the Oxford Word of the Year has told the BBC about the process of picking winners.

Words including chav, selfie and sudoku have won the prize, with rizz claiming the award in 2023.

As the award celebrates its 20th anniversary, Fiona McPherson, a senior editor in the New Words team of the Oxford English Dictionary, said selecting the award involved looking for something that "somehow encapsulates something about that year".

Starting the award in 2004 had been a "case of 'why not'," Ms McPherson said.

"In essence it's a bit of fun - we all love the sort of lists of top films of the year, top books, all that kind of thing."

"So it's a facet of that, but done through words and language, which are the building blocks of the communication that we all use."

She said that looking back over the past two decades of words was "like a time capsule".

Vax was chosen at the height of the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out in 2021, post-truth was the winner in 2016 - to coincide with Donald Trump's US election victory - and 2015 saw the crying-with-laughter emoji become the only symbol to take home the prize.

When asked what her favourite winner from the past 20 years was, Ms McPherson said it "had to be selfie", which won in 2013.

"That really sticks in my mind because it's possibly the only time that everybody was in complete agreement that 'it has to be this'."

As for the 2024 shortlist, she remained tight-lipped - only revealing that the candidates would be unveiled "in the next few weeks".

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