reporting from san francisco — When the Oxford English Dictionary declared an emoji its 2015 word of the year, it was a bit of a head-scratcher. The emoji it singled out — an image of a ...

This year's new word is really an emoji entitled: "Face with Tears of Joy." The frequency of its use tripled in 2015. Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep. The Oxford Dictionary people sucked us in ...

Every year, Oxford Dictionaries’ lexicographers chose a word that captures the year’s biggest trends or changes in the English language. The organization knew it wanted to pick an emoji for 2015.

But to confirm my views, I had to go farther. I had to go to the source. Like sushi, emoji as both word and idea was loaned to U.S. English from Japanese. Emoji, in fact, are one of the few ...

Although that emoji is top "word" - following in the footsteps of "vape", "selfie" and "omnishambles" - there are no plans to include the icons themselves in any Oxford dictionary. According to ...