The Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year is…toxic.

The British publisher defines the adjective toxic as "poisonous".

The word first appeared in English in the 1650s.

It came from the Latin word toxicus, meaning "poisoned".

The Latin word itself actually came from the Greek term toxon,

meaning "bow".

In ancient Greece,

fighters with bows would put poison on the points of their arrows.

Oxford chooses

a Word of the Year that best describes the mood of the past year.