Oxford English Dictionary selects word of the year for 2016

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Oxford Dictionaries on Wednesday said 2016 was best characterized by a word that questions the concept of facts themselves: post-truth.

The dictionary publisher defined post-truth as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."

It's essentially a refinement of truthiness, Stephen Colbert's 2005 coinage, which was the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year 11 years ago: "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true."

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