Emoji stole all hearts and topped the list of most used words last year

The heart of the matter is that the heart-shaped emoji, a "graphic symbol", tops the list of the words that were bandied about the most last year.

That is what the Global Language Monitor said after a survey. It showed that the word was the heartthrob of billions in a day everywhere, according to rt.com.

The second and third bleeding hearts in the list were the Hashtag and Blood Moon---meaning the effect of a lunar eclipse. These words were used most often in the 2014 blogs, Twitter and Facebook, as well as in 250,000 sources of global print and online media, said the US-based survey.

Words had to be used across industries and in several different forms of media, according to businessinsider.com. The words that were used had an effect on language that was used in the newsrooms as well as during global debates.

It was an year of change and upgradation in the English language. After 1,400 years, the language has changed. The system of writing and the alphabets have so many characters, says the company's president and chief word analyst, Paul JJ Payack. He also mentioned the new "ideographs or pictographs," ie emoji and emoticons.

The heart of the matter is that the graphic trend started in Japan in the 1990s, and was very popular for the Internet users all over the world, who sent them through instant messaging programs. With smartphones, the word became even more widely used. The 'three words - eight letters' requires a click on just one symbol ❤.

About 1,000 emoji characters have been given official recognition by Unicode Consortium. This is the official code keeper that also makes for the foundation of the Internet, according to the report. By June 2015, there will be 40 additions in the queue for approval.

Apart from words, the survey also drew up lists that had phrases and names. It targeted writing a history every year with popular English-language words.

Meanwhile, in this year's Names list, 'Ebola' reigns, followed by 'Pope Francis', 'MH370', 'Ice Bucket Challenge' and 'Crimea'. The list of phrases is crowned by 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot', mouthed by demonstrators that protested against the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

This is quite a shift from last year's lists, which featured 'Fail', 'Apocalypse/Armageddon', 'Occupy' and 'Fracking'.