CCT300+Lab9


 * Lab 9**

The word “truthiness” is a term coined by Stephen Colbert. It essentially refers to information that is not entirely factual, but contains some extent of truth in it. Over the past five years, the term that has been steadily increasing in popularity, achieving adoption among the masses. It has even earned recognition as a real word in the New Oxford American Dictionary. The term is most commonly used in the context of political rhetoric. On Twitter, “truthy”, a variation of the word, has been selected as the name for a new research tool used for detecting the propagation of political misinformation. Many other observers have also imitated the addition of the “-iness” suffix, by creating words such as “fame-iness”, “referenciness”, “x-iness” and “proofiness”. Despite the term’s seemingly unseriousness nature, it is undisputable that it now recognized as a legitimate word.

In spite of the status that the term “truthiness” has achieved, it is still difficult to regard it as a proper addition to the English language. The term’s popularity seems to only stem from its memetic nature. The term feels as if it should be categorized with similar words or phrases that have been popularized via distribution channels such as urbandictionary.com. For example, words like “chyeah”, “fosho”, or “dope” have spread in popularity through similar means. Such words may not contain a meaning on the same level of significance as the term “truthiness”, but such properties are irrelevant in terms of the spreading and implementation of a word. A term that simply achieves wide spread use does not have sufficient reason to be added to the English language.

Kyle Martin Manoza