Yesterday, the Oxford American Dictionary picked their WORD OF THE YEAR for 2012. So, um . . . no one come up with any cool words for the next month-and-a-half, okay?

And they picked . . . GIF. Seriously.

Even if you don't know what a GIF is, you've probably seen them. They're those small, animated images that people post online. Every time someone makes a dumb face, a cat yawns, or an athlete falls down, it's GIF material.

GIF is actually an acronym for "Graphics Interchange Format." They've been around for 25 years, but they kind of got replaced by the JPEG format. Then they started becoming a part of pop culture a few years ago.

And by the way . . . no one can agree on how to PRONOUNCE the word. The founders of the GIF format wanted it to be pronounced "jif" . . . but most people pronounce it like the word "gift." Both pronunciations are listed in the dictionary.

Oxford picked GIF as the Word of the Year over Superstorm . . . YOLO, which is a rap/drunk girl acronym for You Only Live Once . . . Higgs boson, the "God" particle . . . and nomophobia, which is a word for the fear of being separated from your phone. (Today.com)