Post-Truth is the 2016 Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year

Posted on November 21, 2016

The Oxford Dictionaries has named its 2016 Word of the Year as post-truth. The adjective is defined as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief." Or, as Stephen Colbert fans might think of it: truthiness.

The words that made the short list for this year's Word of the Year include Alt-right (the right wing political movement), Glass Cliff (when a woman or minority is put into a leadership position where the risk of failure is high), Brexiteer (one who campaigned for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union), Adulting (engaging in annoying tasks that responsible adults perform), Latinx (a gender neutral way to refer to a Latino or Latina), Woke (alert to social injustice), Chatbot (a computer program that can converse with humans), and Coulrophobia (an irrational fear of clowns.)

In this video, cultural commentator Neil Midgley takes us on a tour of this year's additions and why the Oxford Dictionaries decided they were important enough to include in the reference guide. Take a look: