2. The history of the word “selfie”

It’s not a secret that the word “selfie” comes from the phrase “self- portrait”. But we want to emphasize that the word “selfie” has Australian origin: Australians are pretty easy to be recognized by their language – especially the way that they shorten words and then shove a vowel on the end. So “fire officer” becomes “firie” and tradesperson becomes “tradie” as well as self- portrait becomes “selfie”.

Research shows that the earliest known word “selfie” was used in 2002 in an Australian online forum post:

2002 ABC Online (forum posting) 13 Sept. “Um, drunk at a mates 21^st, I tripped ofer 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.”

There is the recent evolution of the word “selfie” nowadays. The rise of the word “selfie” is evident .

Earlier people didn’t use this word to describe a fast self-portrait, made with a smartphone’s camera or web camera. It was popular to use the phrase “MySpace pic” from 2005 till 2008. Because My Space was the largest social network in the world and births the “MySpace pic”.

Social media sites helped to popularize the term, with the tag “selfie” appearing on the photo-sharing website Flickr as early as 2004, but usage wasn’t widespread until around 2012, when “selfie” was being used commonly in mainstream media sources.

But nowadays social network Instagram is considered as the home of the hashtag “selfie”.

In early examples, the word was often spelled with the ending –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.

This word became extremely popular. Today Oxford Dictionaries announces the word “selfie” as their international Word of the Year 2013. Language research made by Oxford Dictionaries editors reveals that the frequency of the word “selfie” in the English language has increased by 17,000% since this time last year.

So what does this word “selfie” mean-? According to the Oxford Dictionary: Selfie – a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media.

Nowadays the meaning has slightly changed: this photo can be taken by more than one person, but people still call it “selfie” or “group selfie”.

By the way the first “group selfie” was taken in the 1920s on a rooftop in New York City, what you see being captured very well be the first group selfie ever, although some experts are pretty sure they didn’t call it that.

From left to right we have Joseph Byron, Pirie MacDonald, Colonel, Pop Core and Ben Falk, with Byron and Falk tasked with holding the heavy camera during the exposure.

Nowadays “group selfie” is very popular too. For a brief while, the most famous “group selfie” was the one taken at the memorial service of Nelson Mandela. This “group selfie” had just three people in it — the Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the British Prime Minister David Cameron, and the President of the United States, Barack Obama. But then Hollywood got involved. The “selfie” made by Ellen DeGeneres at the Oscars in February 2014 is now probably the best-known “selfie”. She started off with Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts — and then was joined by Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jared Leto, Bradley Cooper, Kevin Spacey and more. The Oscars “selfie” becomes the most retweeted image of all time. By the way it has approximately 1 389 349 likes.