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On October 17, 2005, Stephen Colbert introduced the word "truthiness" in a monologue on the "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central that emphasized its role as an ironic political polemic compressed into a single word, as demonstrated in the following excerpts: "I will speak to you in plain, simple English. And that brings us to tonight's word: 'truthiness'. Now I'm sure some of the 'word police', the 'wordanistas' over at Webster's are gonna say, 'Hey, that's not a word'. Well, anyone who knows me knows I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. ..."I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart. And that's exactly what's pulling our country apart today. 'Cause face it, folks; we are a divided nation. Not between Democrats and Republicans, or conservatives and liberals, or tops and bottoms. No, we are divided between those who think with their head, and those who know, with their heart.
Ironically, despite Colbert relying on the overtly anti-intellectual and invented nature of "truthiness" for its humorous effect, the term is actually included in the Oxford English Dictionary as a derived form of "truthy". The entry is marked as "rare or dialectal", with a single citation of "truthiness" dated to 1824 (though it has been posited that the citation actually dates to 1837, with an earlier citation dating to 1832 [1]). As such, Colbert seems to have unknowingly re-invented the word, though he also invented a new, ironic meaning for it, where the original meaning was a straightforward variant of "truthfulness". This distinction is consistent with the announcement by the American Dialect Society, in that it credits "truthiness" as "Recently popularized on the Colbert Report" rather than "invented". Colbert's definition of "truthiness" effectively encapsulates an observation by George Orwell: "We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right." Incidentally, Al Gore cited a similar quote by Orwell in a Jan. 16 speech, using it to frame the Iraq war as an example of unchecked executive power.
Saturday, January 7, 2006 Honestly, "truthiness" is selected the word of 2005 By Heather Clark ALBUQUERQUE — A panel of linguists has decided the word that best reflects 2005 is "truthiness," defined as the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts. The American Dialect Society chose the word Friday after a runoff with terms related to Hurricane Katrina, such as "Katrinagate," the scandal erupting from the lack of planning for the monster hurricane. Michael Adams, a professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in lexicology, said "truthiness" means "truthy, not facty." "The national argument right now is, one, who's got the truth and, two, who's got the facts," he said. "Until we can manage to get the two of them back together again, we're not going make much progress." The group of linguists, editors and academics agreed the most useful word was "podcast": a digital feed containing audio or video files for downloading to an MP3 player. In a runoff for most creative word, "whale tail," the appearance of a thong above the waistband, beat out "muffin top," the bulge of flesh over the top of low-riding jeans. Tom Cruise became the first public figure in the contest's 16 years to be noted for his influence on public discourse. The group coined the term "Cruiselex" to describe such expressions as "jump the couch" and "Cruisazy." "Jump the couch," meaning to exhibit strange or frenetic behavior, won the best Tom Cruise-related word or phrase. It stems from the actor's antics in May on Oprah Winfrey's couch as he talked about his love for fiancée Katie Holmes. "Cruisazy" means to exhibit crazy behavior. "I don't know any other public figure who has inspired so many words in a single year," said Erin McKean, editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary. Other winners included "sudoku," a Japanese number puzzle voted the word most likely to succeed.
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