Oxford Dictionaries' crowns 'toxic' as its 2018 word of the year

Collins Dictionary named "single-use" as their 2018 word of the year and now Oxford Dictionaries' has dubbed "toxic" as theirs. They report that the word was looked up 45% more times on their site over the last year, having "been used in an array of contexts, both in its literal and more metaphorical senses."

Drawn from our corpus, the top 10 toxic collocates for the year - that is, words habitually used alongside toxic - are indicative of this.

Top 10 'toxic' collocates in 2018
by absolute frequency

Chemical
Masculinity
Substance
Gas
Environment
Relationship
Culture
Waste
Algae
Air

"Toxic" beat out the Oxford's shortlist of "Big Dick Energy (BDE)," "Cakeism," "Gammon," "Gaslighting," "Incel," "Orbiting," "Overtourism," and "Techlash."

photos by Shalaco ("clear San Francisco" was taken last week and "toxic San Francisco" was taken this week -- Ouch!)

(NPR)