Tag: Bitcoin

Bitcoins Prove Their Worth

The words of the year choices keep on coming, and Australian lexicographers have fixed on a suitable candidate to take their accolade.

Bitcoin is undoubtedly a word which has found its place in the lexicon this year, despite having been created five years ago. This digital currency has seen its usage in both financial and linguistic senses explode this year, and so the Australian National Dictionary Centre has named it as its word of the year.

It’s undoubtedly a good choice. It is a word which has been significant in public consciousness this year in a way that it wasn’t previously, while measurable usage itself has shot up 1,000%, according to the Australian experts.

Bitcoin is probably not quite as popular as Selfie, which simply confirmed its Oxford Dictionaries choice this week by becoming the centre of Barack Obama’s world. I suspect Australian experts couldn’t choose Selfie as well once Oxford had given it the nod, though it included it in its shortlist for the year, along with Twerk, FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), Captain’s Pick and Microparty.

Sadly Phubbing did not make the shortlist, a shame considering it is a word of Australian origin. But when you consider that words like Bitcoin and Selfie are now being heralded as the words of the year, it means we may look back on 2013 as a year when we were self- and money-obsessed, which is not necessarily the most flattering reflection of ourselves.

Selfie Wins Oxford Vote

When Selfie was included in Oxford Dictionaries Online earlier this year, I commented that I had been looking for a good reason to write about a word that was clearly gaining in usage and was pleased to have an excuse.

Well its status has now been cemented after Oxford Dictionaries announced it as its word of the year for 2013. Although coined in 2002, with the first usage cited in Australia, it is only in the last 12 months that selfies have really made it into the mainstream, with people’s phone-taken self-portraits really forcing their way into public consciousness and national newspapers. Oxford noted that usage of selfie has risen 17,000% over the last 12 months.

Other words on the shortlist included some others featured on Wordability during 2013, including virtual currency Bitcoin; Showrooming, the practice of looking at goods in a store before buying them online; Olinguito, a newly discovered mammal; and Twerk, the dance craze beloved of all tabloids and a word that I am delighted was not chosen for this linguistic accolade. The other shortlisted words were Schmeat, for synthetic meat; Binge-watching, the habit of watching multiple episodes of a single TV show in one sitting; and the always controversial Bedroom Tax.

I think it has been a hard year for choosing a word of the year. Oxford’s choice of Omnishambles last year and Squeezed Middle the year before really summed up society as a whole at that time and gave a keen insight into the state of the nation. This year it has proved harder to find a word that really encapsulates the country’s mood. Perhaps the choice of Selfie suggests that society itself is not as coherent as it was 12 months ago and we are more fractured and individualistic, obsessed with ourselves at the expense of others. In that sense, Selfie perhaps sums up some of the isolation of modern life. Or it may just be a British thing. Dutch experts have chosen Participatiesamenleving – participation society, a society where people take control of their own lives, as the Dutch word of the year.

I have been pondering the word of the year myself and will reveal Wordability‘s choice next week. At this stage, I am happy to reveal it is not Selfie. I will also be revealing details of a brand new book of the year to follow last year’s Eastwooding with the Mother Flame: The Words of 2012, which remains available on Amazon.

Selfies Come of Age

I have been pondering the word Selfie recently. Though not coined this year, it seems to have really emerged into public awareness in the last few months, with a number of mainstream publications focusing on the growth of them or the problems associated with their increasing prevalence. I have been weighing up writing about it for the last few weeks.

A Selfie, in case you don’t know, is a photograph that you take of yourself, normally with your phone, and then share with nearest and dearest via social media. A trend for some time, 2013 is the year when it has become cemented in the English language.

Oxford Dictionaries agrees. In the latest quarterly update to Oxford Dictionaries Online, Selfie has proudly taken its place as a new word. It’s one of a number of words that have taken a refreshingly short time to reach Oxford’s online annals, with Phablet, Space Tourism and Street Food others which seem to have been recognised relatively quickly.

There are also a couple of Wordability favourites making their debuts. Bitcoin was recognised earlier this year as an important word in the ongoing financial saga around the world, while last year’s triumphant Omnishambles has now sealed its emergence with its own entry.

Overall, it is an entertaining update. The challenge now is to write a coherent sentence feature Babymoon, Vom, Twerk, Flatform and Digital Detox. After all of that, I’ll need a glass of Pear Cider.

How to Spend Your Bitcoin

Let’s immediately get one thing straight. If you’ve come here for an in-depth financial analysis of Bitcoins, you’re in the wrong place. But welcome anyway, have a look around. I’m sure you’ll find these offerings on financial haircuts, Greece or Fiscal Cliffs were worth the visit.

If you’re here for the more usual Wordability fare of finding out about new words, then let me tell you more. Bitcoin is not a new word per se, having first been used at the start of 2009. It emerged from research published the year before by Japanese developer Satoshi Nakamoto. But despite its history, the word is certainly novel for many of us, and its sudden emergence into the mainstream may see it being recognised as one of the words of the year.

So what is a Bitcoin? Basically, if I am understanding it correctly, it is a form of electronic currency, protected by a complex algorithm and limited to a maximum number of units. The reason you might have now heard of it is that investors are suddenly ploughing into them as the next potentially safe haven for their cash. Forget gold, it is said, Bitcoins are the new investment bling.

With prices rocketing from a few dollars to over $140, news outlets have been falling over themselves to explain them and debate them, while hackers have already been out to try and destroy them.

I clearly don’t profess to know what the future of Bitcoin is, and whether it will prove to be an investment flash in the pan or the future of money. But either way, it is now enjoying its moment in the sun, meaning that this is the year in which its place in the financial lexicon will be secured.