Merriam-Webster's WOTY: truthiness!

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 12/8/06, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
> This year, Merriam-Webster asked people to vote for Word of the Year
> (instead of simply choosing the word with the most look-ups on
> m-w.com, as in previous years). The people have spoken: it's
> "truthiness" (beating out "google", "decider", "war", etc.). It won by
> "an overwhelming 5 to 1 majority vote," so there may have been some
> ballot-box-stuffing. Here's the announcement, with the ADS definition
> from the '05 WOTY announcement prominently featured:
>
> http://m-w.com/info/06words.htm
>
> And here's an AP story about it:
>
> http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/12/08/no_lie_truthiness_gets_picked_as_word_of_the_year/

Language Logged here:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003877.html


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org