Truthiness is Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year

Posted on December 13, 2006

Merriam-Webster announced that they have selected truthiness as the 2006 Word of the Year. Truthiness was first used by Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report. Merriam-Webster conducted an online poll and truthiness was the overwhelming favorite.

As expected, there were a few surprises in store for us as we pored through your submissions for our first Word of the Year online survey. Either the vast majority of you out there in the Merriam-Webster online community are big fans of The Colbert Report, or Time Magazine was right on target when it honored the show's host Stephen Colbert earlier this year as one of the most influential people of 2006. By an overwhelming 5 to 1 majority vote, our visitors have awarded top honors to a word Colbert first introduced on "The Word" segment of his debut broadcast on Comedy Central back in October 2005.

Here is the entry for truthiness.

1. truthiness (noun)

1. : "truth that comes from the gut, not books" (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," October 2005)
2. : "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true" (American Dialect Society, January 2006)

Here are the rest of the Merriam-Webster's Top Ten Words of the Year.

1. google
2. decider
3. war
4. insurgent
5. terrorism
6. vendetta
7. sectarian
8. quagmire
9. corruption