The word “selfie” was first used in an online forum in 2002.
The earliest known written use appeared on 13 September 2002, in an Australian internet forum called Dr Karl Self-Serve Science Forum. Nathan Hope used “selfie” while describing a photograph he had taken after falling and injuring his lip. He later said he did not necessarily invent the word, suggesting it may already have been casual slang.
The term fits a broader Australian pattern of shortening words and adding the diminutive “-ie” ending, as in “barbie” for barbecue. Although people had been taking self-portraits for decades, the word became much more widely recognized with camera phones, social networks and front-facing smartphone cameras.
A common mix-up is confusing the first use of the word with the rise of the activity. Self-taken photographs were already appearing online in the 1990s and early 2000s, but the documented 2002 forum post is generally treated as the first known use of the term. The Oxford English Dictionary later recognized “selfie” as its 2013 Word of the Year.