Word on the street Selfie

What it means:So you've finally decided to join the social media herd and sign up to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. As you fill out the online forms, your fingers tremble with anticipation at the thought of being part of the Twitterverse. But then you notice a little box in the corner of the screen where you are supposed to upload your profile pic. Alas, there's no one around to take a nice shot of you. You could leave the picture out, but then you would be represented by a graphic of an egg. So you pick up your mobile phone, stretch your arm out in front of you, and snap a selfie. The resulting picture looks like you just got out of bed with a hangover, but it'll have to do.

Where it comes from:While artists and photographers have long mastered the art of self-portraits, most of us haven't yet worked out how to snap a self-portrait without jerking the camera or pulling a silly face. And though God has given us ample arm length, we still can't seem to get our entire heads into the frame. Inevitably, online self-portraits were cropped to the more appropriate "selfies".

How to say it: "Britney's getting desperate for publicity – she sent us a bunch of selfies and claimed they were taken by paparazzi with really good zoom lenses."