“自拍”：《牛津词典》年度热词

selfie 例句：

1. My homework was too boring， so I took a selfie and posted it to Tumblr.

我的作业太无趣了，所以我拍了一张自拍发布到Tumblr网上。

2. My friend takes a lot of selfies and wont hang out with people hotter than her.

我的一个朋友拍了很多自拍，而且不跟长得比自己好看的人一起玩。

Selfie— “a photograph that one has taken of oneself， typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website” —has been named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries editors， after the frequency of its usage increased by 17，000% over the past 12 months.

Editorial director Judy Pearsall said， “Using the Oxford Dictionaries language research programme， which collects around 150 thousand words of current English in use each month， we can see a phenomenal upward trend in the use of ‘selfie， and this helped to cement its selection.”

The word can be traced back to a post on an Australian online forum in 2002， “Um， drunk at a mates 21st， I tripped ofer [sic] and landed lip first （with front teeth coming a very close second） on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus， it was a selfie.”

It has since produced an array of spin-offs， including helfie （hairstyle selfie）， welfie （workout selfie）， drelfie （drunken selfie）， and even bookshelfie—a snap taken for the purposes of literary self-promotion.

Judy Pearsall explained its evolution， “The hashtag #selfie appeared on the photo-sharing website Flickr as early as 2004， but usage wasnt widespread until around 2012. ”

“In early examples， the word was often spelled with a -y， but the -ie form is more common today and has become the accepted spelling. The use of the diminutive -ie suffix is notable， as it helps to turn an essentially narcissistic enterprise into something rather more endearing. Australian English has something of a penchant for -ie words… so this helps to support the evidence for selfie having originated in Australia.”

自拍—— 指的是“人们为自己拍的照片，通常指人们用智能手机或电脑摄像头拍摄后上传到社交网站上的照片”——被《牛津词典》的编辑们评为年度热词，在过去12个月里，它的使用频率上涨了170倍。

编辑部主任朱迪·皮尔索尔说：“在《牛津词典》语言研究项目中，我们每月都会搜集15万个左右当下正在使用的英语词汇，在这个过程中我们发现‘自拍这个词的使用率显示出惊人的上升趋势，由此我们决定将这个词选为年度热词。”

这个词的使用起源，可以追溯到2002年有人在澳大利亚的某论坛上传的一张照片，上传者这样写道：“唔，在朋友的21岁生日派对上喝醉了，我绊了一跤，嘴唇先着地（紧接着上齿着地），磕到了楼梯的台阶上。我的下唇磕出了一个直径约1厘米的洞。不好意思，照片有点模糊，这是一张自拍照。”

随着这个词的走红，人们也创造了一系列相关的衍生词，如helfie（发型自拍）、welfie（健身自拍）、drelfie（醉后自拍），甚至还有bookshelfie（书柜自拍）——即专门为了标榜自己的学识而自拍的照片。

朱迪·皮尔索尔解释了这个词的进化史：“#selfie（#自拍）这个标签，早在2004年就在照片分享网站Flickr上出现了，但直到2012年左右这个词才开始被广泛使用。”

“在早先的例子中，这个单词通常以-y结尾，但是现在以-ie结尾的拼写方式更常见，于是就成为公认的拼写方式。值得注意的是-ie这个表示昵称的后缀的使用，将这个词原先带有的自恋意味变成了一种可爱意味。澳式英语偏好使用以-ie为后缀的词汇……这也证明了selfie这个词是从澳大利亚起源的。”