How Did 'Post-Truth' Become the Word of the Year, and One Way to Create Your Own Post-Truths

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Dec. 5, 2016 - PRLog -- In the wake of the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States, it is not surprising that Oxford Dictionaries has declared post-truth to be its international word of the year.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," post-truth is the perfect term to encapsulate a year dominated by highly-volatile political and social unrest. Accordingly, the editors at Oxford indicated that its use has increased by 2,000% in 2016 compared to last year.

"Fuelled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth as a concept has been finding its linguistic footing for some time."—Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Dictionaries

Post-truth is not a new word, but it has adapted a new meaning. Prior to the early 1990s, it referred to comprehending "after the truth was known." This changed after an article on the Iran-Contra scandal and Persian Gulf war stating, "we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world." Since then, the implication has been that the truth is unimportant or irrelevant.

   I don't like the idea that we may live in a post-truth era...

Read more at: www.leadersayswhat.com/2016/12/post-truth-word-of-the-year