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Truthiness?

Eh? - is this a new word?

Yes and no! This is how Michael Winship in an article on Alternet explains it....

"There's an old saying that politicians use statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost -- more for support than illumination. Increasingly, it seems all manner of facts and figures are manipulated, massaged or just plain made up to fit an existing set of beliefs, regardless of the actual truth.

Last fall, Stephen Colbert, of Comedy Central's Colbert Report, came up with a word to describe this phenomenon: "truthiness."

Now, it appears that the American Dialect Society voted "truthiness" 2005 Word of the Year. You will also find millions of references to the word via a Google search.

There can be little doubt that "truthiness" applies in Australia as much as in the USA.

Read the full Winship article here - and add a new word to your vocabulary!

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