Last month The Oxford University Press dubbed "selfie" the word of 2013, and now Dictionary.com is going in a completely different direction for its choice. The popular online dictionary picked "privacy" as for its coveted "word of the year" honors, a decision it says was fueled by myriad news stories that focused on privacy. That list includes the NSA leaks; changes to TSA body scanners that once showed nudie bits; Google Glass and the Google's changes to its wide-reaching privacy policy; and most recently, a coalition of tech companies urging the US government to reform its surveillance techniques.

The honor comes as many other online destinations are compiling the trendiest, or otherwise most-popular topics of the year. For Google, that list was topped by Nelson Mandela, Paul Walker, Apple's iPhone 5S, and others that were released as part of its annual Zeitgeist earlier today. Yahoo ranked Miley Cyrus on top of its breakdown, followed by celebrities Kim Kardashian, and Kate Upton. Not to be outdone, Microsoft released its top Bing searches of the year, and broke them down by individual category, with Beyoncé taking the top spot.

Last year's word from Dictionary.com was "bluster," a word that was picked for a prevalence of weather activity around the world. As for the site's definition for "privacy," it's "the state of being free from intrusion or disturbance in one’s private life and affairs."