Birth of a nova--not?

[Stephen Goranson]

Collision of verisimilitude and truthiness gets veriness or veriousness?

Via google, a critique of Karl Popper on falsifiability uses TRUTHish.

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

Quoting James Smith <jsmithjamessmith at YAHOO.COM>:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       James Smith <jsmithjamessmith at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Birth of a nova--not?
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>
> I was skeptical when I first saw TRUTHINESS was the
> WOTY, but I am coming to like it.
>
> I understand VERISIMILITUDE as fiction created with
> the appearance of truth.  TRUTHINESS strikes me as
> truth diluted with fiction, yet maintaining the
> overall appearance of truth.
>
>
>
> --- Brenda Lester <alphatwin2002 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
>
>> I agree. Waited for back-up.
>>
>>
>> RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:  In a message dated
>> 1/18/06 8:32:18 PM, AAllan at AOL.COM writes:
>>
>>
>> > 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.
>> >
>>
>> Nah, TRUTHINESS is not a lexicological nova, it is a
>> cute, stunt-wordy flash
>> in the lexicographical pan and will go the way of
>> BUSHLIPS, and about as
>> quickly.
>>
>> There is an old word for what Frey did:
>> VERISIMILITUDE. Come to think of it,
>> that is pretty much what TRUTHINESS means (though
>> admittedly not totally).
>>
>> I am skeptical about predicitions that TRUTHINESS
>> has much of a future. Not
>> only is it doing the same work as VERISIMILITUDE,
>> but it is not all that easy
>> to recognize it morphosemantically as distinct from
>> TRUTHFULNESS or
>> TRUENESS--this is why so many people intitially
>> reacted to it as a silly word: they saw
>> it as a mere (pretentious) variant of one of those
>> established words. If
>> HAPPINESS means 'the state of being happy' and
>> SILLINESS means 'the condition of
>> being silly' and RANDINESS means 'the state of being
>> RANDY' then why should
>> TRUTHINESS mean 'the condition of SEEMING true'? I
>> realize that TRUTHINESS is
>> derived from TRUTHY 'truth-like', but TRUTHY is
>> itself not a "real" word,   and the
>> "-Y" suffix is so ambiguous, that the connection
>> between TRUTHINESS and
>> TRUTHY is opaque.
>>
>>
>>
>> > On the issue of Frey, it is interesting to see
>> that Allan has adopted the
>> > language of the media--"admitted" and
>> "embellished"--in referring to Frey's
>> > really splendid book on addiction and
>> rehabilitation. These words both imply
>> > that Frey did something wrong in adding
>> fictionalized details to his "memoir,"
>> > a genre that goes back to the 16th century at
>> least and that is not the same
>> > thing as an autobiography, in which one expects
>> literal truth. If the author
>> > of the 18th Century "memoir," FANNY HILL really
>> did all the things that Fanny
>> > says she did, then the 18th Century was a lot more
>> queer than anyone ever
>> > thought.
>> >
>>
>>
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> James D. SMITH                 |If history teaches anything
> South SLC, UT                  |it is that we will be sued
> jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com     |whether we act quickly and decisively
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