According to foreign media reports, in early November this year, the Oxford Dictionary selected “Toxic (toxic)” as the 2018 vocabulary. According to the online Oxford Dictionary, the word toxic means “toxic,” which first appeared in medieval Latin in the mid-17th century, meaning “poisoned” or “poisonous”. But the word actually comes from the Greek word “toxikon pharmakon”, which means “poison on the arrow.”

The Oxford Dictionary’s choice of the annual vocabulary is that the term reflects the spiritual traits, emotions or imperatives of the year and has the potential to be a culturally meaningful term. In the past year, interest in the word toxic has increased significantly, and toxic has been selected not only because of the increased frequency of searches, but also because it has been applied in a wider range of areas: from toxic substances in the environment, The lament of today’s destructive political language, to the constantly fermenting #MeToo movement, is closely related.

Katherine Connor Martin, head of the dictionary, revealed that the selection committee initially considered “toxic masculinity” as its annual representative until they found that the meaning of “toxic” has evolved widely.

Also included in this year’s shortlist are “gaslighting”, “incel” and “techlash”, which highlight the emergence of words or the different ways in which they evolve. Last year’s annual vocabulary was “youthquake” and in 2016 it was “post-truth”.