2018. A toxic single-use year?

Posted on 16.11.2018 by Richard Samson

Yesterday Oxford Dictionaries announced their Word of the Year 2018: “toxic”. They said that there had been a 45% rise in the number of times the word has been looked up on its website, and that it best captured “the ethos, mood, or preoccupations” of 2018, thanks to “the sheer scope” of its application.

Until recently “toxic” was used almost exclusively in chemical contexts: a “toxic substance”, a “toxic gas” and “toxic waste”. But with the bitter Brexit debate and the extreme political debates that have dominated on both sides of the Atlantic over the last year, “toxic” has been increasingly used to refer to destructive human communication.

Read more about this story in The Guardian, where you can also see an article about “single-use”, which Collins Dictionary picked as their Word of the Year a few days ago.

These two selections are the starting gun for other proposals between now and the end of the year. Do Tradiling readers have any favourite words for 2018, in English, French, German, Spanish or Catalan?

Please leave any suggestions in the comments.

Richard Samson
Latest posts by Richard Samson (see all)
Contributed by: Richard Samson

About Richard Samson

I’m a teacher living in Osona, Spain. I'm into tennis, dogs, and chickens. I’m also interested in translation and Moodle (well, digital tools for teaching, in general).
This entry was posted in Fun, Word reference. Bookmark the permalink.