What it doesn't mean
Lies are as old as speech. Post-truth describes a climate in which facts carry less weight with the public than emotion and personal belief, so being caught out matters less.
Oxford traced its first use to a 1992 essay by Steve Tesich. Its 2016 pick recorded a surge in use, not an invention.
What it really means
Post-truth is a word for a year when being proved wrong stopped costing as much.
Oxford Dictionaries named it the international Word of the Year for 2016 in mid-November. Its definition: "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief". Its reasons were a sharp rise in use and two votes. Use of the term was up about 2,000% on 2015. Oxford said the spike came in the context of the EU referendum in the UK and the presidential election in the US. Its president, Casper Grathwohl, said they first saw it surge in June, with the Brexit vote, and again in July, when Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination. He linked the word's rise to social media becoming a news source and to growing distrust of facts offered by the establishment. He predicted it could become "one of the defining words of our time".
In 2016 Oxford's UK and US teams picked the same word. In past years they had sometimes split: simples and unfriend in 2009, bovvered and carbon-neutral in 2006. Post-truth beat a shortlist that included alt-right, Brexiteer, hygge and coulrophobia, the fear of clowns.
The prefix is doing something specific. Post- here doesn't mean "after" as in post-war. Oxford's point was that it means a time when truth itself has become unimportant. Oxford traced the word's first use to a 1992 essay by the playwright Steve Tesich. Writing in The Nation about the Iran-Contra scandal and the Gulf war, he said Americans had freely decided they wanted to live in some post-truth world. Oxford added that earlier uses exist, but with the plain meaning "after the truth was known".
Oxford's own 20-year look back later summed up the pick: emotions and personal beliefs seemed to be having a stronger influence on major votes. The word is now mostly found in the phrase post-truth politics.
Where it comes from
after; here, in the sense of having moved beyond
what is factually so
Oxford noted that the prefix here doesn't mean 'after the truth was established', as in post-war. It means a time in which the specified idea, truth, has become unimportant or irrelevant.
- 1992
According to Oxford Dictionaries, the playwright Steve Tesich uses 'post-truth' in an essay, writing that Americans had freely decided to live in some post-truth world.
- June 2016
Use spikes around the UK's EU referendum.
- July 2016
It spikes again when Donald Trump secures the Republican presidential nomination.
- 15–16 November 2016
Oxford Dictionaries names post-truth its international Word of the Year 2016, with use up around 2,000% on 2015.
In real life
- The fact-checkers proved the claim false within an hour, and it made no difference: a post-truth campaign doesn't need the claim to be true, only to feel true.
- Commentators called 2016 the year post-truth politics went mainstream.
- 'Nobody reads the corrections,' the editor said. 'In a post-truth news cycle, the first version is the one that sticks.'
Questions
Q01What does post-truth mean?
Oxford Dictionaries defined it as 'relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief'. It is most often used in the phrase post-truth politics.
Q02Why was post-truth Oxford's Word of the Year 2016?
Oxford said its use rose by around 2,000% compared with 2015, in the context of the UK's EU referendum and the US presidential election. Oxford Dictionaries' president, Casper Grathwohl, predicted it could become one of the defining words of our time.
Q03Who first used the term post-truth?
According to Oxford Dictionaries, the Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich, in a 1992 essay. Scholars have noted the term was also in academic use in the 1990s.
Q04What else was on Oxford's 2016 shortlist?
Alt-right, Brexiteer, adulting, chatbot, coulrophobia (fear of clowns), glass cliff, hygge, latinx and woke, among others.
Sources
- 'Post-truth' named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. The Guardian (15 November 2016).
- 'Post-truth' declared word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. BBC News (16 November 2016).
- Oxford Word of the Year: defining the past 20 years. Oxford University Press.
- Post-truth politics: Wikipedia.