GIF Is Officially 2012's Word of The Year
And justice prevails.
According to the Oxford American Dictionaries, GIF is officially the word of the year! Finally this sacred art form, invented by CompuServe in 1987, is getting the recognition it is so deserving of.
GIF even beat YOLO in taking out the title of the word of the year. Cue Drake being all:
The dictionary defines GIF as "a lossless format for compressing image files" aka a thing of beauty and intrigue. The dictionary sits on the fence with its pronunciation, though, saying it can either be 'jif' or 'gif' which has computer enthusiasts up in arms over at Gizmodo.
"GIF, as in an acronym... Graphics Interchange Format. GIF. Graphics. GRAPHics. HARD G. We don't say 'Jraphics' that would be stupid. Who ever came up with the quote definition needs to have their head exploded Scanners style. Lossless? Really? Which planet are you pseudo-animating?," CyaniCs-IT types furiously.
AustinGuy2 bites back: "No, 'technically' only "JIF" is a correct pronunciation. This is the way the creators of the format defined it, and they are the final arbiter. Unfortunately, ignorance has lead to a hard-G pronunciation in common usage, which just sounds stupid to my ear (because it's *wrong*). Like saying "I'd like a gin martini" with a hard-G sound. Ugh. Please people, Jiff and Jay-Peg. That's the correct way to pronounce them. Stop doing it wrong."
Ingrid Kesa
