The Collins Dictionary have named the 'word of the year' - how many times have you said it?

This year you will have said a lot of new words, because that’s the way language works. You may even have increased your usage of existing words by a great deal - this is also the way language works. Like, maybe you’re using the word “sausage” more this year, every time you sit down; or perhaps there are more instances of “hellfire”, every time you wake up in the morning - it’s all part-and-parcel of the evolution of language.

And every year, Collin’s Dictionary highlights those particular words that have been especially popular over the preceding twelve months, as well as crowning a winning ‘word of the year’. 

Would you like to know this year’s top gobber? Of course you would, so that you can use it, because you certainly haven’t been doing so already in 2018.

It’s ‘single-use’. 

That thing that’s a bit to do with recycling - like, single-use plastic is bad because it’s not recyclable, and will therefore lead to our early deaths. And because everyone now cares about the environment all of a sudden, they’ve starting saying it a bit more. Like, “I never use single-use plastic - I drink everything out of a metal goblet I have chained to my belt.” Things like that.

So what of the other words? What else was popular this year? Well, these were:

Vegan: People who don’t eat food that has come from an animal in any way, unless of course they have been gifted a nut-roast by a kindly squirrel

Floss: A silly annoying dance that should anger you immensely every time you see anyone doing it, even though they are simply having some innocent fun and you are a seething curmudgeon

Plogging: Originating in Sweden, it’s jogging, but you pick up litter on the way, thereby literally making jogging even more rubbish than it already is

VAR: An acronym for ‘video assistant referee’, which is some sort of football-playing cyborg, or something

Whitewash: When a white actor is cast in a role of a character from a different ethnic group, like what Scarlett Johannson did in that football-playing cyborg movie or whatever it was

Gammon: 2018 was the year that the pig dish finally became popular! So much of the lovely pork meat being eaten across the land! “Mother, may I please request another sweaty slice of gammon for din-dins? Whip-woo!” 

It’s either that or one of those red-faced Brexit lot. Who knows. 

(Images: Getty)