Word Of The Year, 2016

19 Nov Word Of The Year, 2016

The nominations are in, the voting done, the fat lady has sung.

And the lucky winner is …. [drum roll] … post-truth!

How does such an unremarkable little compound word win the Oxford Dictionaries’ prestigious title of Word Of The Year 2016? With this bestowal, post-truth joins the illustrious ranks which had previously welcomed 2005’s podcast, 2006’s carbon-neutral, 2009’s unfriend and 2013’s selfie, all of which have all gone on to bigger and better things. Lesser known titleholders include chav (the lout in designer gear, courtesy of 2004); locavore (a person who ate only local produce in 2007); the fuel-saving hypermiling of 2008; Sarah Palin’s pointless 2010 coinage refudiate; the inflation-affected squeezed middle so popular in 2011; GIF (verb) in 2012; the e-cigarette inspired vape of 2014; not to mention 2015’s historic, memorable and tantalisingly controversial “Face with Tears of Joy” emoji.

For those who aren’t aware of the ground rules, the Oxford Dictionaries’ Word Of The Year pageant seeks to honour the word or term which epitomises the passing year. In snaring its crown, post-truth needed to fend off challenges from political favourites Brexiteer and alt-right, as well as the recently very topical coulrophobia (fear of clowns), the alas-all-too-true glass cliff phenomenon, and the phonically scrumptious chatbot. And post-truth did it in style, racking up a stunning two thousand percent increase in usage over the previous year and leaving both the US and UK judging teams with no choice but to award it.

So, 2016 is the year of post-truth. Not as in “having now discovered the truth”, but as in “having moved on to where truth is no longer relevant”. (Really? Hmm … ) So I wonder whether we might be able to request a different WOTY …? Perhaps a recount might be in order, so that our special word ends up reflecting something a little more flattering about our year, than that truth no longer matters?

But no. There was Brexit, and then there was that presidential election. High profile theatres in which emotion was to prove oh-so-much-more compelling than truth, with its disappointing intractability and its unappealing powerlessness to mobilise and manipulate public opinion. Cast the aspersion, make the impression, publish the image – and do it quickly! There’ll be time for someone to clean up those pesky factual anomalies later, well after the die has been cast. Yes, given all that went on in 2016 on the world stage, post-truth was a shoo-in.

So whether we like it or not, we are now stuck in a year in which truth doesn’t matter. Trying to look on the bright side, we can only hope that the titleholder’s year will not see post-truth ascend to the dizzying heights of ongoing acceptability achieved by (now mainstream) forerunners podcast, selfie and carbon-neutral, but rather that it will be refudiated by our better selves, recognised as the coulro that it really is, and hypermile away into that forgotten place where slumber the chavs and locavores of years past. *Face With Tears Of Joy*

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