Mediaboss Marketing

Other shortlisted buzzwords included 'twerk' and 'binge-watch' -- meaning watching lots of TV.

'Schmeat', meaning a form of meat synthetically produced from biological tissue, was also a contender.

Selfie can actually be traced back to 2002 when it was used in an Australian online forum.

The word gained momentum throughout the English-speaking world in 2013 as it evolved from a social media buzzword to mainstream shorthand for a self-portrait photograph.

Its linguistic productivity is already evident in the creation of numerous related spin-off terms showcasing particular parts of the body like helfie (a picture of one's hair) and belfie (a picture of one's posterior); a particular activity -- welfie (workout selfie) and drelfie (drunken selfie), and even items of furniture -- shelfie and bookshelfie.

"Using the Oxford Dictionaries language research programme, which collects around 150 million words of current English in use each month, we can see a phenomenal upward trend in the use of selfie in 2013, and this helped to cement its selection as Word of the Year," Judy Pearsall, Editorial Director for Oxford Dictionaries, said.

'Twerk' became popular courtesy Miley Cyrus' MTV VMA performance.

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Selfie is the word of the year! (Psst! The Pope's got one too)