Oxford Dictionaries has chosen the word of the year for 2015 - and believe it or not, it is not even a word. It is a pictograph and it is officially known as the "Face with Tears of Joy."

According to Oxford Dictionaries, the Emoji was chosen because of the evident increase of its usage throughout the years. Oxford partnered up with Swiftkey in order to conduct a detailed study and the results showed that the "face with tears and joy" is the most widely used emoji in the United Kingdom and in the United States.

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Some do not agree with Oxford's decision.

Mark Gwinn, one of Oxford's editor, said that the decision "showed how communication is changing."

According to the Wall Street Journal, Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Dictionaries, said that the traditional words are not enough to communicate in the 21^st century and that somehow emojis fill in the gap. Grathwohl said, "It's flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully."

ABC Net reported that Gwinn cited some famous personalities using emojis in communication - such as Julie Bishop and Hillary Clinton. He also said that Oxford's decision to use an emoji as the word of the year just shows how fast communication is changing and how those changes can influence language in general.

Although an emoji was the word of the year of 2015, Mr. Gwinn said that there are no immediate plans to add those pictographs with a definition in Oxford Dictionary.

You might wonder what other words or pictographs, for that matter, were included in the shortlist. Other words are quite familiar such as refugee, dark web, and ad blocker.

One of the new one is the word "lumbersexual" defined as young man whose appearance suggest that of an outdoor lifestyle. Another new word is "on fleek" which means extremely good or attractive and stylish.

TagsEmoji, Oxford Dictionary, Word of the Year, Oxford Dictionaries Word of The Year 2015