Climate change, gun violence, the future of democracy around the world, and the plight of an animated character named Forky have all contributed to this year’s word of the year, as named by Dictionary.com: “Existential”.The word was chosen by the team at Dictionary.com amid several quite alarming top searched words in 2019 — including the chilling term “polar vortex”, the uncertainty of “stochastic terrorism”, and the relief of “exonerate”.
