Birth of a nova - truthiness

[AAllan at AOL.COM]

Like astronomers witnessing the birth of a nova, we are watching the nativity
and infancy of a new word that has the possibility of becoming a permanent
addition to the vocabulary. And we have been midwives.

This is rare. It hasn't happened with any of the 15 previous ADS Words of the
Year. They either were well established already, or were clever ephemera that
vanished despite anything we did. Our co-Words of the Year for 1995 provide
examples: "World Wide Web" of the former, "newt" 'to make aggressive changes as
a newcomer' (from U.S. Representative Newt Gingrich) of the latter.

But for 2005 we happened to choose a word that was not known even to many of
the WOTY voters, and could easily have vanished from sight. Instead, it got a
boost from repeated new mentions by its originator on national television. And
then, just as O.K. got its second wind from the O.K. Clubs supporting Martin
Van Buren for president in 1840, "truthiness" rides piggyback on a million
little pieces.

Two more examples: Time Magazine's (Jan 23) article on James Frey's book
refers to "truthiness" being chosen WOTY by "a panel of linguists." And today's
(Jan 18) Chicago Tribune has a column by Clarence Page that begins:

<<Maybe `truthiness' will make you feel a lot better about those things
called details

WASHINGTON -- When the American Dialect Society recently named "truthiness"
its 16th annual Word of the Year, the choice sounded like a joke.

New revelations about James Frey's partly made-up best-selling memoir about
his addiction to alcohol and crack and arrests make "truthiness" sound timely
and downright prophetic. Frey admitted last week that he embellished some
details of his life in "A Million Little Pieces," such as serving time in prison.
He actually served a few hours in a lockup for traffic violations. . . .>

We may be at a tipping point here. A word that is perceived as a joke will be
laughed at but rarely will come into general use. Now, to Page at least, it's
no longer a joke. ("OK" began as a joke abbreviation for "oll korrekt." It
finally escaped its joking origin and became widespread around 1900.)

We will know the word is on its way to success when it no longer needs a
gloss but is understood without explanation. It's helped by its derivation from an
existing word and suffixes. That is, it has evolved naturally rather than
being a special creation, though there was some intelligent design behind
Colbert's use.

The phenomenon of "truthiness" may well be worth a paper at the ADS Annual
Meeting or an article in American Speech. If I were writing _Predicting New
Words_ now, I'd definitely include it. - Allan Metcalf

Reference

Metcalf, Allan. _Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success._ Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

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