student asking question

What is "selfie"? Where does this word come from?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

A "selfie" an image that includes you (alone, with another person or as part of a group) and is taken by pointing the camera at yourself (self + -ie). The first-known appearance of "selfie" in written form occurred in 2002 on an Australian news website, but the word didn't see much use until 2012. By November 2013, "selfie" was appearing frequently enough in print and electronic media that Oxford Dictionaries (publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary as well as other dictionaries) chose the word as its Word of the Year. Ex: Let's take a selfie. Ex: Because I went on holiday by myself I took a lot of selfies.

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