FAKE NEWS RULES THE WORDS

The publishers of the Merriam-Webster dictionary have joined the world of fakiness by giving “Word of the Year” honours to a word which isn’t actually a word. This year’s winner -- truthiness -- was coined by political satirist Stephen Colbert in October 2005 and defined as “truth unencumbered by the facts”. According to the folks who created this award, the word truthiness best summed up the year 2006, beating out competitors “war,” “insurgent,” “sectarian,” and “corruption” by a margin of five to one. Earlier this year truthiness was also recognized as sort-of-almost legitimate by an institute called the Global Language Monitor, which also praised another of Colbert’s made up words, Wikiality, which is defined as “reality as determined by majority vote.” (The Guardian)