selfie

UK/ˈsɛlfi/US/ˈsɛlfi/

nounA2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — self sits at #1,950leans spoken

Other forms: selfies

A selfie is a photo you take of your own face with your phone. Take a selfie, a group selfie, post the selfie.

The word is Australian and was first recorded online in 2002, in a forum post apologising for a blurry one. The front camera arrived later and was built for exactly this, which is why phones now have two.

Definitions of selfie

1nounselfieA photo you take of your own face with your phone at arm's length.A2
“She held her phone out at arm's length and took a selfie in front of the Eiffel Tower.”

selfie is a photo.

Where it comes from

Self plus -ie, first recorded in Australian online use in 2002.

Middle English
self
English
self
English, today
selfie

From self + -ie. From self + -ie. Attested since 2002, originally en-AU -. self comes from Middle English self. From Middle English salve, self, silf, from Old English self, seolf, sylf, from Proto-Germanic selbaz, from Proto-Indo-European selbʰ- (“one's own”). 2

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Technology & Internet, Photography & Film

Practise this word

selfie in the wild

A selfie () is a self-portrait photograph or a short video, typically taken with an electronic camera or smartphone.
Selfie
The camera would be usually held at arm's length or supported by a selfie stick instead of being controlled with a self-timer or remote.
Selfie
A space selfie is a selfie (self-portrait photograph typically posted on social media sites) that is taken in outer space.
Space selfie
The Xperia C3 was announced on July 8, 2014, marketed as the "world's best selfie smartphone".
Sony Xperia C3
In a separate dispute, PETA tried to use the monkey selfies to establish a legal precedent that animals should be declared copyright holders.
Monkey selfie copyright dispute

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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