It might, as some have laughingly pointed out, sound more like a cheap and nasty breakfast cereal, but the word Brexit has shot to both political and lingustic notoriety at a warp speed, starting 2016 as a niche bit of lexical creativity with an uncertain future, and ending it as top of the parliamentary agenda and word of the year for Collins' Dictionary. The author charts the meteoric rise to fame of the portmanteau on everyone's lips.