This list of every 'Word of the Year' is like taking a trip through time

word of the year 2019

Hashtag. Metrosexual. Occupy.

Those three words have one thing in common — they've all been named "Word of the Year."

Every year since 1990, members of the American Dialect Society have gathered at their annual convention — once called "the Super Bowl of linguistics" — to crown the word that defined the year. The linguists and lexicographers vote on words based on their predominance in headlines and widespread use throughout the country.

Anything considered a "lexical item" can be nominated, meaning multi-word phrases like "dumpster fire" — named word of the year in 2016 — are fair game. The same goes for hashtags, prefixes, and even emoji.

Because each word of the year is closely tied with the era that spawned it, looking back at the list of every winner is like flipping through a yearbook of the past quarter-century. There's the surge of computer-related words like "cyber" and "information superhighway" in the early 1990s and a string of political words like "chad" and "weapons of mass destruction" that reflected some of the biggest stories from the early 2000s.

More recently, tech words like "tweet" and "app" have dominated the vote, demonstrating how much the internet has influenced our language.

Take a look at every word of the year, and take a trip through time.

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2018 — tender-age shelter

One of President Donald Trump's most controversial policies paved the way for 2018's word of the year: "tender-age shelter."

The term refers to the facilities used to detain babies and other young children who were separated from their families at the US-Mexico border under the Trump administration's immigration policy.

The practice of separating children from their families drew widespread condemnation, and linguists paid especially close attention to the "tender-age" designation, which some called a euphemism meant to downplay the harsh conditions of the facilities.

"The use of highly euphemistic language to paper over the human effects of family separation was indication of how words in 2018 could be weaponized for political necessity," Ben Zimmer, the American Dialect Society's new words chair, said in a statement.