In the 27th edition of its annual word of the year vote, the American Dialect Society has chosen “dumpster fire” as the Word of the Year for 2016. Defined as “an exceedingly disastrous or chaotic situation”, the term rose to prominence last year, especially in the context of the heated US presidential elections.

Other 2016 Word of the Year selections evoke the same context of turmoil and disbelief. Oxford opted for post-truth and Cambridge favoured paranoid, while Dictionary.com selected xenophobia and Merriam-Webster chose surreal.