Author Topic: Oxford Dictionaries 2016 Word of the Year (Read 739 times)

Geremia · « **on:** November 30, 2016, 04:14:00 PM »

post-truth, adj.
relating to or denoting circuмstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/embed/3xcW7Tg5E34[/youtube]

(source)

TKGS · « **Reply #1 on:** November 30, 2016, 04:32:08 PM »

Clearly, I don't read the kind of publications a stupid work such as this is used.

Geremia · « **Reply #2 on:** November 30, 2016, 04:38:24 PM »

Quote from: TKGS

Clearly, I don't read the kind of publications a stupid work such as this is used.

Aren't all words good?
What this word signifies is certainly not good.

AlligatorDicax · « **Reply #3 on:** December 05, 2016, 04:31:26 AM »

Quote from: TKGS (Nov 30, 2016, 5:32 pm)

I don't read the kind of publications a stupid work such as this is used.

Are you calling any of the Oxford (English) Dictionaries--especially the revered O.E.D.--"a stupid work"? I seriously doubt you'll find much agreement with that insult. The Anglophone Internet would be a better place if users would refer to dictionaries more often, instead of less often dwindling toward nearly never.

Quote from: TKGS (Nov 30, 2016, 5:32 pm)

Clearly,

Really?  Your thoughts would be clearer if you'd be careful enough to make sure you've typed the words you needed or intended:

Quote from: TKGS (Nov 30, 2016, 5:32 pm)

I don't read the kind of publications __[?]_____  a stupid ~~ work ~~ word such as this is used.

Sooo, which quote indicates what you really intended?

Either way, the "Word of the Year" abuses the meaning of the Latin prefix "post". And spelling the word with a hyphen after that compound-forming prefix is awfully clueless

.

It's more disturbing to me that Oxford presents 2 ~~ twits ~~ tweets for their examples

. Do they also post photos of urinal graffiti as examples of usage sources?

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Note #: Alas, Oxford has gone from the prescriptive side over to the dark, language-decaying descriptive side (e.g.: Modern English Usage editions beginning with the 3rd), so they take words as they find them, even when a reader would expect their editors to know better.

Centroamerica · « **Reply #4 on:** December 05, 2016, 04:37:01 AM »

Oxford and Cambridge are pretty much the de facto authorities when it comes to the English language. Few will challenge that fact.

TKGS · « **Reply #5 on:** December 05, 2016, 05:48:11 AM »

Quote from: Geremia

Quote from: TKGS
Clearly, I don't read the kind of publications a stupid work such as this is used.
Aren't all words good?
What this word signifies is certainly not good.

No. Not all words are doubleplusgood.

Quote from: AlligatorDicax

Quote from: TKGS (Nov 30, 2016, 5:32 pm)
I don't read the kind of publications a stupid work such as this is used.

Are you calling any of the Oxford (English) Dictionaries--especially the revered O.E.D.--"a stupid work"? I seriously doubt you'll find much agreement with that insult.

No. I'm calling people who read such tripe stupid.

Be real people. Dictionaries don't make up words. They report and provide definitions of words that are being used. I'm not criticizing the dictionary for identifying a neologism. I'm criticizing stupid people who make up stupid words. I'm especially criticizing people who think this is a good word. So, if you think this is a good word, please note: You're stupid.

AlligatorDicax · « **Reply #6 on:** December 05, 2016, 05:56:19 AM »

Quote from: Geremia (Nov 30, 2016, 5:14 pm)

post-truth, adj.
relating to or denoting circuмstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief

([<https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016>])

Ugh.  Upon further review, it's really right here that I should've pointed out:
· it abuses the meaning of the Latin prefix "post", and
· spelling the word with a hyphen after that compound-forming prefix is awfully clueless.

But there was really no need to abuse that prefix, because there's already a compound word "truth-averse"

, which conveys almost exactly the meaning intended, at the cost of 2 more letters albeit 1 more syllable. That that shouldn't be any real impediment, because liberals typically prefer replacing short well-understood words with longer words or phrases
. Maybe the existing compound would be uncomfortably honest for its likely leftist-"progressive" audience (the communist-friendly mag The Nation was cited for its origin in 1992). Be that as it may, I saw the concept fully operational back among Left-Coast leftist-orthodox animal-protectionists at least as long ago as 1986. Sigh.

It's intriguing that 4 of the 10 candidates on the "Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year shortlist" seem as if they were invented by leftist-"progressives" (these being the other 3):
· the leftist propagandists' "alt-right" (sooo, "far-right" no longer considered "far" enough for satisfactory disparagement?),
· identity-group biz-discrimination term "glass cliff", and
· the gender-neutral ethnicity "Latinx".

Readers might also put another word in the leftist-"progressive" category:
· the black-slang adjective (with comparative & superlative!) "woke", meaning alert to issues of real--or knee-jerk imagined--discrimination.

Somewhere around here, I've got an article (maybe hard-copy, but maybe just a link) about the leftist habit of deliberately using words in a new way. Not to enrich the language (at least literal manure provides the benefit of enriching soil), but instead to corrupt political discourse. A benefit for such leftists is that it takes advantage of the language-decaying descriptivist habits of modern dictionaries.

Perhaps the best current example is the corruption of the word "hate", not just by stomping down the threshhold for applying it, but also perverting it as meaning "refusing to approve of, support, or advocate". But I digress.

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Note *: On the model of "risk-averse".

Note #: Politically correct wording, e.g.: "The visually impaired leading the visually impaired", lacks the Anglosaxon punch of brevity. It's also brief in Latin, but it's not on the tips of my fingers right now.

TKGS · « **Reply #7 on:** December 05, 2016, 06:05:10 AM »

Quote from: AlligatorDicax

Quote from: Geremia (Nov 30, 2016, 5:14 pm)
post-truth, adj.
relating to or denoting circuмstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief

([<https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016>])

Ugh.  Upon further review, it's really right here that I should've pointed out:
· it abuses the meaning of the Latin prefix "post", and
· spelling the word with a hyphen after that compound-forming prefix is awfully clueless.

Very good analysis. The creation of new words in ways that abuse the English language is how we now understand "choice" to mean abortion, "gαy" to mean ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ, and "Catholic" to mean that new Protestant religion that has occupied Rome.

Seldom is Newspeak actually informative and often confuses long before it makes clear.