Oxford's Dictionaries Word of the Year is an Emoji

(WTXF) The Oxford's Dictionaries Word of the Year is… the 'Face with Tears of Joy' emoji. This is the first time that an emoji has been chosen instead of a word.

The Oxford University Press partnered with mobile technology business SwiftKey to explore frequency and usage statistics for some of the most popular emojis and data showed that the 'Face with Tears of Joy' emoji was used the most globally.

The emoji made up 20% of all the emojis used in the UK in 2015 and 17% of those in the US, according to SwiftKey.