With the new year just around the corner it will soon be time to change our calendars. Before doing just that, though, let’s take a quick look at which lexeme the Oxford dictionary has deemed word of the year:
Post-truth: relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief
While the word has been in existence for over a decade, it has become quite popular in 2016. It has been used time and time again to describe the type of politics that have dominated certain events over this past year, such as the Brexit referendum and the US presidential elections. With things looking the way they do, it’s likely that we’ll continue to hear the word for a while yet.
In the process of choosing a word of the year, the Oxford dictionary compiles a list of contenders. This shortlist also gets published. Check out the other interesting words that nearly made the cut. And, if you dare, we’d like to propose a little challenge: create one complete sentence that includes all 10 words in such a way that still makes sense and is grammatically correct. Here’s our attempt:
Greater than my coulrophobia is my fear that while the world is indeed full of decent folks who choose to stay woke, scale the glass cliff, support Latinxs, and dedicate themselves to adulting, we are overwhelmingly surrounded by mindless Brexiteers and members of the alt-right and it won’t be long before human conversation leads to nothing but debate about post-truth politics, leaving interaction with chatbots as our only source of hygge.
What do you think? Share your proposal with us in the comments below! And be sure to check out our YouTube channel for more fun facts about language and translation: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGEV1DMkanm2FO5Hbnn3s5g
