The top words and phrases of 2014 survey results were released and the number one most used word is not even a word, it’s an emoji.
According to the Global Language Monitor, the emoji for heart or love was the “Top Word for 2014.” Variations of the emoji appear billions of times a day around the world.
These characters are ideographs or pictographs that are called emoji and emoticons, and they can be found on the keyboards of most smartphones.
“The English Language is now undergoing a remarkable transformation unlike any in its 1400 year history — its system of writing, the Alphabet, is gaining characters at amazing rate,” said Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst of the Global Language Monitor.
There are about a thousand emoji characters now officially recognized by Unicode Consortium, the official keepers of coding that forms the basis of the Internet. They regularly review new suggestions with the next 37 or so being finalized for June 2015.
The remaining “words” in top 15 list include; hashtag, vape, blood moon, nano, photo bomb, caliphate, (white) privilege, bae, bash tag, transparency, sustainable, clickbait, Quindecennial, and comet.
The top phrase of 2014 was “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” something demonstrators chanted after the officer-involved shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. The top name of 2014 was Ebola, followed by Pope Francis.
The following figures show the Top 7 Emojis on a specialized Twitter feed for 24 hours back in June 2014. Fourteen of the Top 100 were heart-based.
For the complete list of top words and phrases, and more from Global Language Monitor, click here.
