Oh lord…talk about made-up words for people who make shit up (but desperately HOPE that the act of believing their own smack makes it true). CNN (the Chicken Noodle Network) “reports”:
A panel of linguists has decided the word that best reflects 2005 is “truthiness,” defined as the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts.
[…]
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.”
Yeah, professor, no shucking fit! How be we just call “truthiness” by its right name, instead of making up new, nonsensical terms for a concept that already existed long before this year. Hey, I know: Let’s call it WISHFUL THINKING!!!
Seriously, folks, this is just another way of saying someone is faith-based, as opposed to reality-based. Although I prefer the term “reality-challenged” for such people. After all, reality challenges them to come up with ever more sophisticated means of evading it.
What a pity more of them don’t rise to that challenge in ways that don’t involve mangled language or synapses bent out of shape.