This year, while the virtual world was awash with “selfies”, “twerking” and other new words like “hackable”, Maltese-language social media users coined quite a few terms of their own. Among those that stood out were stessu, another word for a self-portrait, the “selfie” that is usually taken with a hand-held camera or phone. Another was tippapra, meaning to make a “duck face” – or pout for a picture.

Every year the online Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries, among others, list new English words that have made into the pop-culture lexicon. Most of the time, these are moulded from other English words.

Selfie was reportedly this year’s biggest, reaching its pinnacle after US President Barack Obama’s unfortunate photo taken of himself, David Cameron and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt at the funeral of Nelson Mandela.

Meanwhile, plenty of local divas posted their own selfie – or stessu – online.

Now, this word has been named among the 13 “words of the year” by the popular Facebook page Kelma Kelma run by University of Malta lecturer Michael Spagnol.

The page was set up this year but has nearly 26,000 followers. He updates it regularly with curiosities and other information about the Maltese language.

One of the page’s sections focuses on a “word of the day”. This includes words found in the Maltese dictionary, popular words made up by young people, or new words, because the “vocabulary of every language is not a close-ended list but a bottomless well”.

“The dictionary, the vocabulary, grows with us. There are two main ways to expand the vocabulary: by borrowing words from other languages, like baguette, pineapple and sandwich... or by creating a new word from the language’s own resources – something which is not done enough when it comes to the Maltese language,” Dr Spagnol said.

“We need to create many more neologisms, new words, instead of doing a simple copy and paste from the English language.”

A word that made the list, which was created in a similar fashion, is sakrangħas – made up of sakra (drunkenness) and ngħas (sleepiness).

Although Dr Spagnol cannot tell whether the exercise will be repeated next year, the list has gone down well with Kelma Kelma followers.

Kelma Kelma’s top 13

Tippapra – pouting for a picture (duck face)

Titmazzaz – become attractive

Sakrangħas – someone who is so sleepy they seem drunk

Tillajkja – to ‘like’ a picture on the social media

Titmandar – get wasted

Tiffrejpja – accessing someone else’s Facebook page without their permission

Sapjosesswali – sexually attracted to someone’s intelligence

Nomofobija – fear of ending up without a mobile phone

Stessu – selfie

Splodut – (for lack of a better definition) freak, weirdo.

Movembru – Movember

Andropawża – men’s menopause

Għalabibiżmu – indifference

For more colourful descriptions: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=649640188415800&set=a.484576658255488.114381.484545468258607&type=1&theater