OXFORD University Press, one of the world’s leading watchdogs of the English language today revealed the children’s word of the year. And it isn’t even a word, but the hashtag symbol, #.
It follows an intensive study of the new and most-used words included in 500-word stories submitted by more than 120,000 five-to-13 year olds in a BBC Radio 2 competititon.
Increasing numbers of Britih children are using the hashtag symbol as an expression of drama or comment.
The 500 words storytelling contest also revealed a top 10 of the most common words used by Liverpool children in their stories, with the word "vents" topping the dictionary. It was followed by lollies and in third place moles.
The rest of the top-10 words were wrappers, serene, badges, proposed, prawn, kart and in 10th place, apes.
Across the UK, all young eyes turned to Liverpool for creative inspiration. The top characters mentioned in stories were footballers Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney. They shared the glory with Cinderlla, Snow White and Adolf Hitler.
PS4, MacBook and Instragram have overtaken words such as MP3, Playstation and even the word TV. Even once popular words such as email and mobile have been demoted by the younger population
The analysis was undertaken by a team of lexicographers from OUP, backed by the Oxford Children’s Corpus, the largest available children’s corpus in English.
An OUP spokeswoman said: “Language is constantly changing and evolving and children are using language in new and unusual ways to write and communicate. The findings reflect the inventiveness of children today and their new and imaginative use of words every year along with their interests and preoccupations.”
Vineeta Gupta, head of children's dictionaries at OUP, commented on the 'significant change' in the use of the hashtag this year.
Gupta said: 'Language is constantly changing and adapting. Children are true innovators and are using the language of social media to produce some incredibly creative writing.
'Children have extended its [#] use from a simple prefix or as a search term for Twitter to an editorial device to add drama or comment.”
A number of examples of the use of the hashtag in children’s stories were quoted in the OUP report: ‘Then it happened. Engine # 1 went dead, followed by engine #2 & #3, My Dad is the best, his coffee mug proves it (# 1 Dad), and ‘The only thing I knew for sure was that I was going to get eaten! ( # frightened!!!)’
Other words which a saw significant rise in the past 12 months were Zoella - the name of a popular make-up blogger - selfie, blog, YouTube and youtuber.
Newer words such as PS4, MacBook and Instragram have overtaken words such as MP3, Playstation and even the word TV. Even once popular words such as email and mobile have been demoted by the younger population.
It all points to new technology increasingly being at the centre of children's lives. But young people also demonstrated in their stories an interest in current affairs and history, with many references to World War One, ebola, Ukraine and Syria.
Researchers were also interested in how many children included mythological characters in their stories, such as Zeus, the Minotaur and Hercules - it seems #theyloveZeus.
A number of new words also emerged during the analysis, including wellysaurus, gloomful and Stegasuarez, a mutant monster hybrid of a Stegosaurus and footballer Luis Suarez.
Vents, lollies and moles. Wait - vents???
CONFIDENTIAL was confused. What on earth could Liverpool kids be going on about?
Vent? Was that short for ventriloquist? Vent as in anger, or spleen. We looked on the Urban Dictionary and were pretty shaken by some suggestions to we went back to OUP to clear things up.
Its spokeswoman told us: "It is used as a noun, as defined by www.oxforddictionaries.com : an opening that allows air, gas, or liquid to pass out of or into a confined space.
"In the stories composed by Liverpool entrants, it is used creatively and imaginatively in action/adventure/spy stories, mainly by boys, as a means of escape or secret entry." Some examples are below.
We crawled through the vents then all of a sudden like a call to battle… the siren sounded. Yells echoed all over, yells like "gas the vents!" Then all of a sudden a hiss and then gas behind clogged up the vents. (The Nuclear Escapists, boy, 11)
"We need to get out of here, when an airport is closed it gets knocked down. We might die" announced dad. We started looking around for vents and any other means of escaping. (Trapped, girl, 10)
Mutation Mouse was trying to find a potion to make him small and make him have super jump powers. Then he could climb through vents. (Freedom 4, boy, 10)
The mission was going well and 3 weeks in they had infiltrated the Kremlin doing so by going in from the roof and through various vents. (Talent, boy, 13)
We were also confused by "moles", but thought we'd better stop there.
