"Maplewashing"
Language Log 2025-12-13
The Canadian English Dictionary
is a project being developed by the Society for Canadian English, a not-for-profit consortium including Editors Canada, the Canadian Word Centre at UBC and the Strathy Language Unit at Queen’s University.
And as of yesterday, they announced their first Word of the Year. 
Their press release says that
an earlier version of this release identified the winning word as the gerund “maplewashing”, the headword in the DCHP. CED prefers the more general “maplewash”.
The rest of the shortlist included elbows up, renoviction, ding, hegemonologue, icicle kick, gong show, and hoser:
Curious how the word you voted for measured up to others? Check out the results! It was a close race; “maplewashing” just narrowly beat out the popular runner-up, “elbows up,” 33.8% to 31.3%.
— Canadian English Dictionary (@canadiandictionary.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 7:51 PM
The chosen word obviously follows the metaphorical trail whitewashing → greenwashing → maplewashing.