With the new year just around the corner, many people are planning to start it off with annual traditions, one of them being the Word of the Year. Each year, many different dictionaries and people from around the world choose one word to summarize the past year.

“This year has been emotional because I had experienced the feelings of kindness and excitement from my friends in band,” Phuong Tran (9) said. “I had so many people around who had opened my eyes to the outside world.”

Different dictionaries from around the world take part in the tradition of Word of the Year, each one choosing a different word. In November, the Oxford Dictionary chose toxic as their most used word from the past year.

According to Oxforddictionaries.com, “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.”

Not only will dictionaries chose the word people used the most during the year, they will also pick a word that describes the general mood for the year.

“Our 2018 Word of the Year is misinformation,” Dictionary.com wrote in a recent article. “The rampant spread of misinformation poses new challenges for navigating life in 2018. As a dictionary, we believe understanding the concept is vital to identifying misinformation in the wild, and ultimately curbing its impact.”

As well as choosing a word to describe the past year, many will also choose a word that they will try to apply to daily life in 2019.

“I’m going to try and use the word love next year,” Samantha Castillo (10) said. “[Love] is such a beautiful thing and I believe if we use this word daily we could create a better world for like everyone.”