'Heart emoji' named international word of 2014

London: Heart emoji or <3 has been recently picked up as the international word of 2014, it has been revealed.

Emoji and other emoticon are driving a radical change in the evolution of the English language as pictographs become ingrained into the world's vocabulary, the Mirror reported.

The list was complied by the 15th annual survey of the English language by the the Global Language Monitor which analyses the internet, social media including Twitter and print and electronic news media.

Each emoji represents an emotion, expression, or state of mind, or a person, place or thing and there are now some 722 characters, with another 250 being made available during the next year, and 37 more due for approval in June 2015.