AMERICAN COINED WORDS CHOSEN FOR PRESTIGIOUS HONOR

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Collins English dictionary just announced it's new word additions. Among them and causing a bit of a stir for having made it into the prestigious English dictionary, two American coined words. The top word to enter the Collins English Dictionary this year was 'photobomb'.

-- TUCSON, AZ, NOV 17, 2014 – Collins English dictionary just announced it’s new word additions.  Among them and causing a bit of a stir for having made it into the prestigious English dictionary, two American coined words.  Those words?  It turns out they have entered  from the world of cellular phones – ‘Selfie’  and ‘photobomb’.While selfies have been around for a very long time (some, Wikipedia among them) credit photographer Robert Cornelius as having created the first selfie ever in the year 1839) the photobomb is a more recent addition as a descriptive photographic term.  The ‘selfie’ is defined by the dictionary as being a noun, a photograph of one’s self.  Many ‘selfies’ are actually taken by the photographer pointing their camera to a mirror refection and then snapping the photograph.  One of the most famous ‘selfies’ was taken by the 86th Annual Oscars host, comedian Ellen DeGeneres, who walked into the audience at the Shrine auditorium and photographed herself with her cell phone during the Oscars while she stood among audience members who were famous in their own right.  This ‘selfie’ was tweeted nearly 2.8 million times in a 24-hour period.  Other famous ‘selfies’ have included President Barack Obama with Bill Nye the Science Guy and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and a half-naked Geraldo Rivera who tweeted “70 is the new 50”. The top word to enter the Collins English Dictionary this year was ‘photobomb’.  And while it did not take the top spot at the Chambers Dictionary, according to Britain’s The Guardian, it was an extremely close second choice.  According to Collins, a photobomb is a verb what people do ‘by intruding into the background of a photograph without the subject’s knowledge’.  One particularly famous  ‘photobomb’ shows a smiling Queen Elizabeth II smiling while looking on through a tennis net at two teenaged girls photographing themselves.  One particularly famous one was created when singer Kelly Clarkson was at the podium to sing for the Inauguration of President Barack Obama and a cheeky former president, Bill Clinton, mugged for the camera behind her.For more information, visit http://pbpbooth.com/.  ###


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