Truthiness

File:ColbertPainting.jpg

Colbert: making his mark. (Note the Peabody award on the mantle.)

Truthiness is a term invented by Stephen Colbert as the subject of a feature called The Wørd, on the first episode of his satirical news program The Colbert Report, and which was selected as the 2005 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society as a unique reflection of the year's zeitgeist.

Excerpts of Colbert's introduction of "truthiness" are as follows:

"I will speak to you in plain, simple English. And that brings us to tonight's word: 'truthiness'. Now I'm sure some of the 'word police', the 'wordanistas' over at Webster's are gonna say, 'hey, that's not a word'. Well, anyone who knows me knows I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true, or what did or didn't happen. Who's Brittanica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I want to say it happened in 1941, that's my right.

"I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart. And that's exactly what's pulling our country apart today. 'Cause face it, folks; we are a divided nation. Not between Democrats and Republicans, or conservatives and liberals, or tops and bottoms. No, we are divided between those who think with their head, and those who know, with their heart.

"Consider Harriet Miers. If you 'think' about Harriet Miers, of course her nomination's absurd. But the president didn't say he 'thought' about his selection. He said this:

(video clip of President Bush:) 'I know her heart.'

"Notice he didn't say anything about her brain? He didn't have to. He 'feels' the truth about Harriet Miers.

"And what about Iraq. If you 'think' about it, maybe there are a few missing pieces to the rationale for war. But doesn't taking Saddam out 'feel' like the right thing? Right here, right here in the gut? 'Cause that's where the truth comes from, ladies and gentlemen: the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your stomach than in your head? Look it up. Now, somebody's going to say, 'I did look that up and it's wrong.' Well mister, that's because you looked it up in a book. Next time, try looking it up in your gut. I did, and my gut tells me that's how our nervous system works. Now I know some of you may not trust your gut, yet. But with my help, you will.

"The 'truthiness' is, anyone can read the news to you; I promise to feel the news at you."

A few days after the premiere episode, in its third article on The Colbert Report, the New York Times specifically discussed this segment, although they misreported the Wørd as "trustiness". They later ran a correction clarifying that the Wørd had been "truthiness", not "trustiness". On the next episode of the Report, Colbert took the Times to task for their error, pointing out (with obvious irony) that "trustiness" is "not even a word".

In January 2006, etymology professor Anatoly Liberman predicted that truthiness would be included in dictionaries in the next year or two. [1] Just a few days later, the American Dialect Society announced that truthiness was selected as its 2005 Word of the Year. [2] The Society described their rationale as follows:

'In its 16th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted truthiness as the word of the year. First heard on the Colbert Report, a satirical mock news show on the Comedy Channel [sic], truthiness refers to the quality of stating concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true. As Stephen Colbert put it, "I don’t trust books. They're all fact, no heart."'

The Associated Press reported on the American Dialect Society's selection of truthiness as the Word of the Year [3], including the following comments by one of the voting linguists:

'Michael Adams, a professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in lexicology, said "truthiness" means "truthy, not facty." "The national argument right now is, one, who's got the truth and, two, who's got the facts," he said. "Until we can manage to get the two of them back together again, we're not going make much progress."'

On the first episode after the selection of his word as Word of the Year, Colbert lamented that news reports neglected to acknowledge him as the source of the word. In response, he put Michael Adams onto his "On Notice" board, and Associated Press reporter Heather Clark, the author of the article, on his "Dead To Me" board. [4]

Commentary about "truthiness" on the Internet and among blogs became fairly common, such as one representative example on The Huffington Post entitled, "Truthiness: Colbert Was Robbed!" [5]

External links

• American Dialect Society Official Site
• Official Colbert Report Website at Comedy Central