Vape Was Oxford Dictionaries' Word Of The Year In 2014

In case you missed it, Oxford Dictionaries chose an interesting word of the year for 2014. What word was it? The word was “vape” and it inspired us, at the time, to carefully consider just how much interest in vaping would continue to rise.

How did it all start? Well, according to Oxford Dictionaries account, it all began when folks began to abbreviate the words vapor and vaporize. Vapor being a word used to describe what vaporizers produce and vaporize being a word used to describe the process of transforming blends into vapor.

Why Vape?

The reasoning behind the dictionary’s choice of word for the year 2014 was explained in some depth by the dictionary itself, who explained in a written explanation shared on their website:

“As e-cigarettes (or e-cigs) have become much more common, so vape has grown significantly in popularity. You are thirty times more likely to come across the word vape than you were two years ago, and usage has more than doubled in the past year.”

In other words, the popularity of the word propelled it to their list of candidates for that year’s word of the year. Taking into account just how popular the word had become and how quickly it rose in popularity, Oxford Dictionaries eventually settled on it as their word of the year. We applaud their decision.

Shortly after their decision was announced, it received widespread news coverage from major news outlets, including NPR, Time, and many others. Based on our account, this only furthered awareness of the word and what it represented. In other words, this simple decision on the part of a publisher of dictionaries helped spread awareness of vaping, which in turn has helped enlighten the world at large to the option to smoking that vaporizing provides.

Oxford Dictionaries launched their official website in 1992. At the time, they called themselves Oxford Dictionaries Online. In 2017, they rebranded themselves as Oxford English Living Dictionaries. The dictionary is the work of the Oxford University Press.

What do you think of the word “vape” being named Oxford Dictionaries word of the year?