Truthiness

[Baker, John]

        Thanks, Jesse.  I was misled by the representation that
"truthiness" was not to be found in dictionaries.  I see it is also in
The Century Dictionary, with a quotation from 1832, and Making of
America has it from 1854.

        These examples do not make me feel any better about "truthiness"
as the 2005 WOTY.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Jesse Sheidlower
Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2006 2:17 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Truthiness

On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 02:03:24PM -0500, Baker, John wrote:
>         Incidentally, Google Groups reveals that the word, though
> doubtless independently re-created by Stephen Colbert or his writers,
> did have some degree of pre-existing use.  From 1/9/1995:  "If you
> want to complain of annoying fundamentalist outbreaks of
> one-truthiness, on the other hand, I would be glad to support you."

As long as we're mentioning the existing pre-Colbert uses, let's not
forget that OED records it from 1824....

JTS