Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is an emoji

Electric Smiley

It has been a tradition of Oxford Dictionaries to choose the most popular word once a year.

Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries, said conventional words have been having a tough time fulfilling the surging needs of visual communication in recent years. The tech company quickly found that the “Face with Tears of Joy” emoji is by far the most popular.…