Everyone Hearts the Heart Emoji, Most Popular 'Word' of 2014

People loved using the heart emoji (this thing: ♥♥♥♥♥♥) in 2014, so much that it’s the most popular quote-unquote “word” of the year. This makes sense, because speech is cliché now and emojis are really the only way to express emotion. <3 <3 The news comes courtesy of a report from Global Language Monitor, which claims that “the Heart and Love emoji, emoticon, and variations thereof appear billions of times a day around the world.” It’s the first time they’ve crowned “an ideograph” as Word of the Year.

According to The Verge:

Although the above claim — that the heart emoji and its cognates appeared “billions of times a day” — is most likely a big exaggeration, it’s credible that an emoji overtook any single word as the most popular lexical item in 2014, and even more possible that that emoji was a heart.

The research aligns with previous surveys, including this FiveThirtyEight list of the 100 most used emojis on Twitter that ranks the Heart as No. 1. Poor poop emoji. Personally, my “word” of the year was this ;/ but hey.

If you’re curious, “hashtag” and “vape” came in second and third on GLM’s list of most popular words. “Bae” and “white privilege” are in the top 10.