The not-so-slow death of truthiness?

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

    Ron's point in this and his subsequent e-mails on the subject is valid: Whichever word ADS selects as word of the year should be one that actually dominates the lexical scene of the preceding year--something on the order of "Katrina" or "tsunami." There are probably many educated speakers of English who never even heard of "truthiness." Its selection as Word of The Year by ADS represents a bit of whimsy, a flight of fancy, an idea which should have been classified among the also-rans rather than the big winner.
     
Gerald Cohen

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From: American Dialect Society on behalf of RonButters at AOL.COM
Sent: Wed 8/16/2006 8:26 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: The not-so-slow death of truthiness?

This caused me to think, "Whatever happened to truthiness?" A quick check of
LexisNexis Academinc shows 69 hits in the past six months, 3 in the last
month, and 0 in the past week. This makes it about as well used as LIMPID and only
slightly ahead of OTIOSE and RECONDITE. Franklin Pierce is more popular.

At least ADS didn't vote it "most likely to succeed." Maybe "Most likely to
suck as a real word" would have been a better category?

<snip>

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