All around the world, whether on Instagram, Twitter or any other form of social media, “selfie” captions more than 57 million photos and counting.

Oxford dictionary has named “selfie” 2013’s word of the year outvoting both “twerk” and “schmeat.” ‘Selfie’ has spawned a number of other spin-offs such as “welfie” and “dreflie.” The official definition, according to Oxford, is “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smart phone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.” The use of this word has gone up an astronomical 17,000% in the past year alone.

“It’s not a very refined word so it’s kind of sad it’s word of the year,” said Baylee Harward, sophomore.

Meanwhile, Merriam-Webster Dictionary has declared ‘science’ word of the year with a usage increase of 176%. John Morse, president and publisher of the dictionary defends the decision saying, “the more we thought about it, the righter it seemed in that it does lurk behind a lot of big stories that we as a society are grappling with, whether it’s climate change or environmental regulation or what’s in our textbooks.”

“I feel like selfie should be word of the year because it is used so often, especially Sundays on Instagram (Selfie Sunday),” said Rebecca Schmidt, sophomore.

2013’s Word of the Year originally came from a chatroom in Australia describing a photo September 13, 2002. Selfies technically have existed since the early 1900s and the invention of the Kodak Brownie. Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna has even taken a selfie. The self portraits were also quite popular on MySpace and Facebook.

The run-of-the-mill ‘selfie’ is typically taken in a bathroom mirror, with a friend or at a random public event, but it does not stop there. People are now taking selfies while driving, at funerals (perhaps funerals of those taking selfies while driving), on the side of the road with a police officer after getting a ticket, etc. Celebrities are even seen pausing on the red carpet to take a quick picture.