‘Post-truth’ is 2016’s word of the year

Oxford Dictionaries have selected ‘post-truth’ as 2016’s international word of the year. Following the contentious “Brexit” referendum and a divisive US presidential election caused the use of the adjective to skyrocket.

The dictionary defines “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.

In this case, the “post-” prefix doesn’t mean “after” so much as it implies an atmosphere in which a notion is irrelevant. “Post-truth” was selected after Oxford’s dictionary editors noted a roughly 2000 percent increase in its use last year – it was appearing with far more frequency in news articles and on social media in both the UK and the US.

The first spike came in June, driven by the rhetoric leading up to Britain’s EU referendum, Oxford Dictionaries President Casper Grathwohl said.

“Post-truth” use spiked again in July after Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination. “It’s not surprising that our choice reflects a year dominated by highly-charged political and social discourse,” Grathwohl said.

“Fuelled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth as a concept has been finding its linguistic footing for some time.”

“Post-truth” was selected as the 2016 word of the year even before results of the US election were known, said Katherine Martin, head of US dictionaries for Oxford University Press.“We choose words that are going to highlight the interplay between our words and our culture,” Martin said.

The final word of the year is meant to be one that captures the “ethos, mood or preoccupations of that particular year and to have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance”.