We’ve used a lot of words in 2018, so it’s no surprise that there is more than one “word of the year.” Oxford Dictionaries’ judgment is that “toxic” illuminates something about this year.
Oxford Dictionaries says it found a 45 percent increase in look-ups of toxic and it was used in so many situations that “the sheer scope of its application, as found by our research, made toxic the stand-out choice for the Word of the Year title.”
Here at NPR, we’ve reported on the Internet’s toxic content, the ill effects of toxic stress and, of course, the dangers of toxic chemicals.
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