Hunch. Oxford's last shortlist on 30 November 2025 had only three words, against six and eight the two years before, which leaves fewer chances to share one.
Resolves YES if at least one word, or a form of the same word, is in both the Oxford University Press 2026 announcement (winner, words of the year or shortlist) and the 2026 word of the year or shortlist of Collins or Cambridge published before it, and NO if there is no shared word. If neither Collins nor Cambridge has published a 2026 list before Oxford, the market is void, and BBC News and Guardian reports decide when the dictionary pages do not open.
We looked for cases where Oxford named its word of the year after another big English dictionary had already named its own word that year. We found ten such years, from 2015 to 2025, and in each of them Collins went before Oxford.