Adulting, Woke or Post-Truth: Which Was Awarded 2016 Word Of The Year?
(MINNESOTA CBS)-- It's about that time again for end of the year summaries, isn't it? As 2016 comes to a close, best-this and worst-that lists will begin to be en vogue again, nearly as synonymous to the end of the year as the holidays are.
The 2016 election will imperialize most of the talking points when the year is reflected upon, and that's evident today as the Oxford Dictionaries has made its selection for word of the year.
Post-truth (ADJ.) is defined by the dictionary as: relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.
Yep, the impetus behind this movement would be the 2016 Election (as well as Brexit, according to Oxford Dictionaries.)
Some other quick facts about post-truth:
- The 'concept' has been around for a decade
- Associated regularly with the phrase 'post-truth politics'
- It's usage was low until May where it spiked, then hit its apotheosis in October
Past the winner, Oxford Dictionaries had a shortlist of other options that narrowly missed out. A few popular ones among young adults such as 'adulting' (behaving like an adult) and 'woke' (alert) must've have been far off from 'post-truth.'
Others include 'Brexiteer' (person in favor of Britain withdrawing from the EU) and another word only 2016 could push to prominence: 'coulrophobia' (irrational and extreme fear of clowns).
If coulrophobia had won, that means we'd have had bigger problems than the 2016 election. That whole clown thing wouldn't have been a small thing. So let's choose to view it that way, and be thankful.
