The Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year is “toxic”. So that's depressing. But it's understandable as we seem to be living in toxic times. But just why did the Oxford English Dictionary choose “toxic” as 2018’s word of the year?
《牛津英語詞典》今年的年度詞匯是“toxic”（有毒的），這很令人沮喪。但這也可以理解，因?yàn)槲覀兯坪跎钤谟卸镜哪甏?。只是為什么《牛津英語詞典》會(huì)選擇“toxic”作為2018年的年度詞匯呢？

According to OED's blog post: The Oxford Word of the Year is a word or expression that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year, and have lasting potential as a term of cultural significance.
《牛津英語詞典》在博客中指出：牛津年度詞匯是能夠反映過去一年里人們的道德觀、情緒或關(guān)注點(diǎn)的詞匯或表達(dá)，而且它可能會(huì)有持久的文化意義。

In 2018, toxic added many strings to its poisoned bow becoming an intoxicating descriptor for the year's most talked about topics. It is the sheer scope of its application, as found by our research, that made toxic the stand-out choice for the Word of the Year title.
2018年“toxic”在“有毒的”這個(gè)詞條的基礎(chǔ)上增加了許多詞目而成為描述今年最熱門話題的一個(gè)迷人的符號(hào)。我們的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，這絕對(duì)屬于它的應(yīng)用范圍，也使它在今年的年度詞匯角逐中脫穎而出。

Our data shows that, along with a 45% rise in the number of times it has been looked up on , over the last year the word toxic has been used in an array of contexts, both in its literal and more metaphorical senses.
我們的數(shù)據(jù)顯示，在過去的一年里，通過牛津詞典網(wǎng)站搜索“toxic”這個(gè)詞的次數(shù)增長了45%，而且這個(gè)詞的字面含義以及其隱喻含義都被應(yīng)用在各種背景中。

But while “toxic” may be a bit of a downer for word of the year, at least the runner-ups didn’t take the crown. Some of those runner-ups included:Gaslighting, Incel, Techlash, Overtourism.
雖然“toxic”成為年度詞匯也許讓人有些悲哀，但至少年度詞匯的第二名并沒有超過它。排在其之后的熱門詞匯有：Gaslighting（煤氣燈光）、Incel（非自愿獨(dú)身者）、Techlash（對(duì)大型科技巨頭公司的批評(píng)與抵制）、OverTourism（過度旅游）。

（翻譯：Dlacus）