‘Toxic’ Is Oxford Dictionary’s Word Of The Year And It’s Apt For 2018

‘Toxic’ Is Oxford Dictionary’s Word Of The Year And It’s Apt For 2018

Oxford Dictionaries has chosen the word ‘Toxic’ as the word of the year. The words like ‘Gaslighting’, ‘Overtourism’ and ‘Incel’ were also in the running. The word has not been chosen merely upon the statistics, but on the wide range of subjects it has proliferated to.

It unquestionably has been the most commonly used word to describe anything and everything around us. The air, our relationships, our workplaces, the people around us and so on. And while we can use face masks and freshly canned air to tackle the pollution, there aren’t any masks in the market (yet) to filter out the toxicity we have circling around in our lives. From relationships that have physical and mental implications that are toxic to workplace politics that can wreak havoc, we can see why the word would have such traction.

2018 was majorly about letting the poison out. Be it the onset of the #MeToo movement that has caused a sort of purging in many industries or quite literally letting the toxins out in the open with our actions and polluting the air, this is the year that has been, well, clearly toxic. Unlike Britney Spears’ connotation for the word, this is a high we must come down from.

We’ve seen quite a jump from last year’s word ‘Youthquake’ which means a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people, to this year’s chosen word ‘Toxic’. Guess we know what unsupervised youthquaking leads to – Toxic results!

Guess the entire world needs a deep cleanse from all the negativity that has come up in 2018.

Sadhika Sehgal

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