GIF, Word of the Year

NOV 13 2012 · 12:00

A face-palm reaction GIF. By 2012 the format was so embedded in online vocabulary that Oxford American Dictionaries named GIF its Word of the Year. Place: Oxford American Dictionaries press release, New York and Oxford Figures: Katherine Connor Martin, head of US Dictionaries at OUP · the Oxford lexicography team On 13 November 2012 the Oxford American Dictionaries announce that GIF, used as a verb meaning to create a GIF file of, is their Word of the Year. The shortlist it beats includes YOLO, superstorm, nomophobia, and Eurogeddon. The choice is justified, per Katherine Connor Martin, on the grounds that the word has crossed from technical jargon into general verbal usage: I GIF-ed it, let me GIF that. It is the first formal lexicographic recognition of the format as a generalized cultural action. The press release notes that like Google, GIF can be used as a verb. The format is twenty-five years old. The acronym has finally outgrown the file extension.