Oxford Dictionaries has announced that its Word of the Year for 2018 is
toxic, which visitors to its
websites searched for not only in isolation but as an element in multiple
phrases.
Toxic, which derives
ultimately from the Greek term
toxon, meaning “arrow,” came to apply
to poison delivered on the point of an arrow. In Greek,
toxikon meant
“poison arrow,” and later, the Latin word
toxicum pertained to poison
itself. The primary definition of the adjective
toxic is “poisonous,”
though by extension, it has come to mean “harmful” or “malicious.”
Although several phrases frequently used in searches on the Oxford
Dictionaries sites pertain to the literal meaning of
toxic—reflecting
concerns about pollution—several pertain to the latter senses, including “
toxic culture” and “
toxic environment,” which allude to a
physical realm that is unhealthy for one’s psychological (and therefore
physical) health, such as a company or other organization that tacitly condones
sexist or unethical behavior, or a dysfunctional domestic situation.
A
toxic relationship, meanwhile,
is one in which one of the parties is emotionally and/or physically abusive
toward the other, and toxic masculinity is the concept of a distorted
perception about what it means to be a male in modern society; symptoms of this
malady include aggression and excessive competitiveness, as well as sexism and
homophobia.
Toxicity is the quality of being
toxic, and a toxin is a poison; antitoxin is an antidote to poison. The study
of poisons, meanwhile is toxicology, and one who studies poisons is a
toxicologist. (
Toxic- and
toxico- are combining forms
referring to poisons.)
The Oxford Dictionaries also listed other words and phrases that were most
frequently entered in search boxes on its websites this year, including a
couple that are little known in the United States—and, interestingly, they all
are associated, more or less, with toxic behavior.
One British English–centric term is
cakeism,
which alludes to the saying “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” meaning
that one should not be greedy or try to have two things that are incompatible.
Cakeism, by contrast, suggests that one can or should exploit two alternative
opportunities at once. The other is
gammon,
extrapolated from the term for salted pork leg (which turns pink when cooked)
and describing a white person, especially one with a conservative
sociopolitical worldview, who develops a florid complexion due to the person
becoming emotionally exercised about an issue such as Brexit, the controversial
and contested decision by the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European
Union.
Other terms on the list also reflect current events and reactions to them.
The phrase “
big dick energy,” for
example, pertains to an outsize confidence that suggests that the person in
question (generally, a celebrity) has such an attitude because he is genitally
well endowed, though the term is applied to charismatic women, too (and the
idea is not to be confused with toxic masculinity, though someone with BDE may be
a toxic person).
The term
gaslighting,
referring to psychological manipulation to undermine a person’s confidence
or sanity, is inspired by the title and plot device of the 1938 stage play
Gas
Light and its subsequent film, television, and radio adaptations (the
titles of which treated the phrase as a closed compound), in which a man
surreptitiously dims the gas-fueled lighting in the home he shares with his
wife and then insists to her that the lights are as bright as usual, among
other tactics, to drive her insane.
Incel is a truncation of the phrase
“involuntary celibate,” describing a man whose difficulty forming healthy
relationships with women (or even obtaining dates with them) leads to sexual
and emotional frustration that escalates to hostility toward not only women but
also the men incels resent for being successful in sexual and romantic
pursuits. The term applies especially to virtual communities of men who
commiserate with each other in online forums, which, as closed (and therefore
toxic) environments, amplify the condition.
Orbiting, meanwhile, is
when someone no longer communicates directly with another person through social
media but still keeps track of that person online; the term, suggesting someone
periodically looming over someone else, is a loose synonym for
lurking
(though lurkers usually leave no trace of their visit) and differs from
ghosting—the
term for a sudden, complete cessation of contact, generally from someone one
has been dating—in that an orbiter leaves evidence of a continuing (and perhaps
toxic) interest.
The concept of the deleterious effects of excessive numbers of travelers to
a vacation destination, including damage to historical sites and the local
environment as well as negative impacts on the location’s residents, is called
overtourism.
Finally,
techlash
describes negative and hostile attitudes toward large technology companies
because of the pervasive influence on society of their products, erosion of
privacy for people who use them, and their inability to prevent identify theft.
The term is a construction based on
backlash, which means “adverse
reaction” (or “sudden backward movement”), from the notion of a whip or rope
inflicting pain or damage as it unexpectedly strikes someone or something when
one uses the whip or rope.
