Kim Kardashian and Rihanna make selfie the word of 2013 - beating twerk to the top spot

Selfie has has been named the word of 2013, with the help of celebrities such as Rihanna and Kim Kardashian.

Beating terms such as twerk and bitcoin, the use of the word selfie has increased by 17,000% in the last year.

The selfie - or self-picture - has become commonplace as millions of people, including celebrities and even the Pope, have posted them online.

One of the most famous selfies of the year was Kim Kardashian's post-pregnancy bum shot, gaining nearly a million likes on Instagram.

Oxford Dictionaries said the earliest known usage is an Australian online forum post from 2002, where a man posted a photograph of an injury to his lip.

He added: "And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie."

Judy Pearsall, editorial director for Oxford Dictionaries, said: "Social media sites helped to popularise the term, with the hashtag selfie appearing on the photo-sharing website Flickr as early as 2004, but usage wasn't widespread until around 2012, when selfie was being used commonly in mainstream media sources."

Selfie is now part of the online Oxford Dictionaries, but it has not yet been added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Selfie is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as "a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website".

To qualify, a word does not need to have been coined in the last year, but it does need to have become prominent or notable in that time.