For all you truthiness-haters...

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Mon Oct 16 20:43:32 UTC 2006


According to the New York Magazine cover story on Stephen Colbert,
"truthiness" is "a term that's been embraced as the summarizing
concept of our age." Who's doing the embracing is left unsaid.

There's also some insight into how Colbert (re-)coined the word:

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http://www.newyorkmetro.com/news/politics/22322/
Still, the debut episode had its moments, such as the introduction of
a segment titled "The Word," which facilitates an opening rant by
Colbert. On the first show, the word was supposed to be truth, because
a central element of Colbert's character is his distinction between
"truth" and "facts." "I'm not a fan of facts," he declared on-air, by
way of a manifesto. "You see, the facts can change, but my opinion
will never change, no matter what the facts are."
At about 3:30 on the day of the first taping, during a rehearsal,
Colbert stopped and beckoned to his writers. He'd decided they needed
a better word. "It's not stupid enough," he said. "We're not talking
about truth, we're talking about something that seems like truth—the
truth we want to exist." Then he had an idea: "Truthiness." He now
displays, on a bookshelf in his office, a sampler embroidered with
TRUTHINESS inside a gold frame.
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--Ben Zimmer

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



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