“Toxic” is the 2018 international word of the year, according to Oxford Dictionaries, which annually selects “a word or expression that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood or preoccupations of the passing year” and has “lasting potential as a term of cultural significance.” Indeed, it’s hard to think of a choice that better reflects the current political, social and cultural environment. We fully endorse the selection, although it risks joining “robust,” “epic” and “iconic” among overworked terms.

Toxic is, of course, an old and common word meaning poisonous. Derived from the Greek, it first appeared in English in the middle of the 17th century. But 2018 produced a rapid uptick in its metaphoric usage — a 45 percent increase in the number of times it was looked up on oxforddictionaries.com, for example.

“So many different things are tied together by the word,” Katherine Connor Martin, Oxford’s head of U.S. dictionaries, told The New York Times. Thanks to the #MeToo movement, “toxic” came to be associated nearly as often with “masculinity” as with “chemicals” in 2018. (One hopes that in this sense toxic will remain a description of a certain kind of repellent male behavior rather than synonymous with masculinity in general, but it will be up to men of good will to cement the distinction by their own conduct.)

The top 10 collocates for “toxic” in 2018 included “environment,” “relationship” and “culture,” suggesting a broad consensus that the metaphorical air we’re breathing is unhealthy. Anyone who was exposed to the political rhetoric of the midterm elections and to social media “discourse” in the past year could readily attest to that fact. That’s not to say that toxic has by any means lost its utility as a description of the state of the physical environment: “Substance,” “gas,” “waste,” “algae” and “air” rounded out the top 10.

What’s the antidote? Heck, we don’t know. But we can suggest a few words that we hope gain traction in 2019. (You are invited to send along your nominations as well to forum@vnews.com.)

First, though, one that we hope slips back to more literal usage: Addiction. When more than 70,000 Americans are dying every year from drug overdoses, the casual use of “addiction” to refer to a strong attraction to or obsession with, for example, a genre of novel, or television program, or some other enjoyable activity diminishes the powerful impact of actual physical addiction to drugs or other substances.

Now for the hoped-for 2019 contenders.

Twiticide: Used to describe the act of ruining one’s reputation or career by means of an ill-conceived or abusive tweet. That, of course, would require Americans to abandon their current infatuation with “anything-goes” speech and to recognize that what the First Amendment permits, social mores have traditionally moderated.

Defriend: A shorthand way of expressing the decision to delete one’s Facebook account (as opposed to ending an individual internet relationship). It is becoming ever clearer, through enterprising reporting by The New York Times, The New Yorker and other traditional media outlets, that Facebook is truly the evil empire, whose leaders pay only lip service to being concerned about its abuse in spreading disinformation and compromising the privacy of users.

Anti-social media: See above. An all-purpose term to refer to Facebook and its brethren.

Friluftsliv: English has always enriched itself by borrowing words and terms from other languages. This is a Norwegian term that is translated as “open-air living,” and it expresses a passionate physical and spiritual attachment to the natural world — the great, truly great, outdoors. If, at this time next year, the Oxford Dictionaries determined that “friluftsliv” best reflected 2019’s “ethos, mood or preoccupations,” then we would all be in a much better place, even if it weren’t Norway.