Yesterday, the Oxford American Dictionary picked their WORD OF THE YEAR for 2012. Words such as superstorm, YOLO, and nomophobia came close but were not chosen! Instead the dictionary decided that, "GIF" would be the word of the year for 2012!! Gif is an acronym for "Graphics Interchange Format." They are the small, animated images that people post online such as the picture above. The Oxford Dictionary describes an animated GIF as “a primitive technology used to provide animations, particularly on web sites.” Although they've been around for 25 years, they were replaced by JPEG format. They re-gained popularity and started becoming apart of pop culture a few years ago.
