‘Plastic’ named Oxford Children’s Word of the Year

Oxford Children’s Dictionaries have named ‘plastic’ as the Oxford Children’s Word of the Year 2018!

The Oxford University Press analysed 134,000 short stories submitted to BBC Radio 2’s 500 Words competition.

Plastic is the Oxford Children’s Word of the Year because of its significant increase in use in 500 Words (a total rise of more than 100% from 2017), the awareness and passion children demonstrated for environmental issues, and the creative solutions to combat them that children invented in their stories, said the Oxford.

Children use plastic in their stories in an emotive way with titles such as: The Plastic Shore, The Mermaid’s Plastic Mission and The Evil Mr Plastic.

“Sea animals are dying because of you and your plastic! Nets get caught around dolphins’ necks. Plastic used for bottles gets tangled around sea turtle shells…” the OUP said.

The words ‘recycle’ and ‘recycling’ have also seen an increase in frequency of over 100%. Vineeta Gupta, Head of Children’s Dictionaries at OUP says: “Children have shown they are acutely aware of the impact plastic has on our environment and how it will affect their own future. They have used their stories to devise imaginative ways to combat this issue and bring about change in their world.”

Chris Evans says: “Plastic is a fantastic Word of the Year! It really shows just how incredibly engaged with and how much the young people in Britain today care about the world around them.

Last year, Trump was the Children’s Word of the Year.