Who would have thought that a man who can rarely string together a complete sentence would influence what got chosen as Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year? Well, the unthinkable has happened again. Donald Trump’s electioneering, along with Brexit, have popularized the use of the term “post-truth”, which is an adjective 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’.
The term has been around for a decade, but its usage has gone mainstream during the past year, and often collocates with “politics”.
Read more on the meaning and the rise of the term (and see the other words on the shortlist) on the Oxford Dictionaries’ site.