ByMyReckoning

It appears that Steven Colbert has an even bigger influence on our culture than we imagined.

Colbert introduced the word "truthiness" in the word segment during his stint on Comedy Central in 2005. The American Dialect Society defined it's meaning as "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true." Colbert himself has defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books".

Visitors to Merriam-Webster's website have seen fit to elected "truthiness" as their word of the year.

Now I'm no linguistic maven but surely something akin to instinct covers all the bases here? A statement or position cannot be verified as being true without evidence and until such evidence has been provided it must be classified as instinct, prejudice or belief. On second thoughts methinks Mr Colbert's discovery of this concept was preceded by the current Bush Administration, as they have apparently been using this concept as a guiding principle for some time. Perhaps the folks at Merriam-Webster have hit on something? Maybe it's truly a word for our time?

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