2016 Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year – Post-truth
POST-TRUTH : ADJECTIVE
• Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.
•
‘in this era of post-truth politics, it's easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire’
‘some commentators have observed that we are living in a post-truth age’
Oxford Dictionaries recently announced post-truth as its 2016 international Word of the Year. It is a word or expression chosen to reflect the previous year in language. Every year, the Oxford Dictionaries team of editors reviews probable list of words for word of the year and then debates their merits based on a word that captures the ethos, mood or preoccupations of that particular period / year. Extensive language research conducted by Oxford Dictionaries editorial team reveals that use of t he word post-truth has increased by 2000 percent over its usage in the previous year (2015).
The Word of the Year need not have been coined within the year 2016. To qualify for consideration, the Oxford teamlook for evidence and found its usage has been increased significantly across a broad range of media. On the basis of that evidence, post-truth included into OxfordDictionaries.com
The word post-truth has been in existence for the past decade, but Oxford Dictionaries team has seen a spike in frequency this year in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States.
The earliest known usage of the word “post-truth”
Post-truth seems to have been first used in this meaning in a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich in The Nation magazine. While writing about the recent geo-political event, he used this word. Reflecting on the Iran-Contra scandal and the Persian Gulf War, Tesich expressed the sorrow state of people he wrote that ‘we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world’.
Other short-listed words for ‘Word of the Year’
adulting [noun, informal]
alt-right [noun]
Brexiteer [noun, informal]
chatbot [noun]
coulrophobia [noun]
glass cliff [noun]
hygge [noun]
Latinx [noun]
woke [adjective, US informal]