In the space of a single week I have, without overly noticing at the time, accused someone of “gaslighting” me for being excessively cheerful on the phone when I thought sobriety was required; described to someone else an intention to do a “hard reset on my boundaries” after I was kept waiting and didn’t adequately protest; complained about the “toxic” atmosphere introduced after an argument; and outlined what I considered to be the problematic “centring”, within a conversation, of certain issues at the expense of other, more important issues.

The takeaway from this, apart from the fact that I am a very fun person to be around, is that none of these descriptors are words I would have used even five years ago – a fact born out by the Oxford Dictionaries’ announcement this week of their most popular words of the year. “Toxic” came out top for the sheer breadth of its usage – starting, as noted in the New York Times, with the widespread uptake of “toxic masculinity” in the wake of #MeToo, and from there spreading outwards to encompass every shade of dysfunctional relationship.

Other shortlisted words included “gaslighting”, “incel” and, more surprisingly, “gammon” – defined by the dictionary for the benefit of American audiences as a word “typically used in the UK as a derogatory term for an older middle-class white man whose face becomes flushed due to anger when expressing political (typically rightwing) opinions”.

‘Many of these words have their roots in political or activist circles and reflect the heightened emotional and political state in which many of us are living.’ Photograph: Steve Parkins/REX/Shutterstock

Many of these words have their roots in political or activist circles and, unlike the dictionary’s previous words of the year – for example, neutral descriptors such as “glamping” or “vape” – seem expressly to reflect the heightened emotional and political state in which many of us are currently living.

Aesthetically, they are also quite ugly. When I bang on about toxicity or gaslighting, I notice in myself a tendency towards a tone of wounded officiousness, which may be justified or not, but either way has a sort of strangulating effect, even as it expands the range of what I might adequately describe.

And this is the complaint about these sorts of terms, of course. The Oxford Dictionaries might just have easily gone for “rape culture”, or “trigger warning”, or “microaggression” in its shortlist, descriptors that act on some with the force of a hostile ideology and are considered less facilitators of subtle political or personal states and more gateways to lazy forms of reasoning that undermine critical engagement.

So it is with modish political terms until they are worn down to a state of normalisation, so that for once, it seems to me, the word of the year has real purchase. As a 15-year-old, I recall reading Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and flipping out as she described her frustration, in the 1950s, at not being able to name the specific cause of the drudgery and awfulness of her life, finally hitting on a radical new term: “sexism”.

• Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist