Oxford Dictionaries official word of the year: Post-truth, with alt-right as a runner-up

The most important word of the year has gotten a quick and bumpy ride through politics and the news media this year. But it won.

“After much discussion, debate, and research, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth — 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 international language authority said in its announcement Thursday.

The word itself was previously considered a “peripheral term” — but one that has become “a mainstay in political commentary,” now bandied about by major publications and a favorite in headlines.

 “It’s not surprising that our choice reflects a year dominated by highly-charged political and social discourse. Fueled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth as a concept has been finding its linguistic footing for some time,” said Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries.

“We first saw the frequency really spike this year in June with buzz over the Brexit vote and again in July when Donald Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination. Given that usage of the term hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down, I wouldn’t be surprised if post-truth becomes one of the defining words of our time,” he added.

“Alt-right,” another hyphenated political term, was a runner-up in the word derby. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “an ideological grouping associated with extreme conservative or reactionary viewpoints, characterized by a rejection of mainstream politics and by the use of online media to disseminate deliberately controversial content.”

Candidates for Word of the Year are chosen each year based on their power to reflect “the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year and to have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance,” the organization said.