Every year, per annum in fact, Oxford Dictionaries come up with a ‘Word of the Year.’ I’m not sure if the adjudication panel hold a reality-style word-off series of auditions or not, but the word of the year for 2016 is an adjective and is…
POST-TRUTH
‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’
So, why of all the words in all the world, that had to walk into our lives, did they choose this one?
It won’t have escaped your attention that 2016 has been a year dominated by politics with the EU/Brexit Referendum & the U.S Presidential election. It is in this area that has seen a spike in the usage of the word, and its association with the phrase – Post-truth politics.
So there you have it.
The Word of the Year, 2016, is post-truth…
There are plenty of other words they could have come up with in my eyes, but hey, this is a family show, right?
Who will be the ‘Word of the Year’ in 2017?
Do words get nervous at awards ceremonies? I bet Agitated and Alarmed do.
Tom Harris 