truthiness

In today’s usage, truthiness is inextricably linked with comedian/talk-show host Stephen Colbert, who used the word on the premiere, 17 October 2005, episode of his television show The Colbert Report (2005–14). Truthiness, as used by Colbert, is the truth as we wish it to be, what we know in our gut as opposed to what we know in our brain. In the show, Colbert parodied television pundits who invent facts to support their opinions and ignore evidence that doesn’t. In the very segment in which he introduced the word, Colbert went on to give an example of how truthiness works:

And on this show, on this show your voice will be heard . . . in the form of my voice. 'Cause you're looking at a straight-shooter, America. I tell it like it is. I calls 'em like I sees 'em. I will speak to you in plain simple English.

And that brings us to tonight's word: truthiness.

Now I’m sure some of the word police, the wordinistas over at Webster’s are gonna say, “hey, that’s not a word.” Well, anybody who knows me knows I’m no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They’re elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn’t true. Or what did or didn’t happen. Who’s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I wanna say it happened in 1941, that’s my right. I don’t trust books. They’re all fact, no heart.

Like the show on which it appeared, the word became a big hit. Most uses of truthiness have been in discussion of Colbert’s show, but there have been enough uses outside the context of the program to consider this sense of truthiness to be something more than a mere stunt word. The American Dialect Society named truthiness as the Word of the Year for 2005, as did Merriam-Webster for 2006.

Colbert, while clearly the source for the current definition and popularity of the word, is not the first to ever use truthiness. The word appears in John Wilson’s Noctes Ambrosianae #60, originally published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in February 1832, one of a long series of imaginary dialogues between a set of characters, both imaginary and based on real people, conducted in Ambrose’s Tavern in Edinburgh. But Wilson uses truthiness to mean truthfulness, faithfulness, not at all the same thing as Colbert’s usage:

I did not come here to hear you speak truth during the rest of the evening. You do not speak truth well, North; at the same time, I do not deny that you may possess very considerable natural powers of veracity—of truth-telling; but then, you have not cultivated them, having been too much occupied with the ordinary affairs of life. Truthiness is a habit, like every other virtue.

The word in this older sense also appears twice in the memoirs of Joseph John Gurney. The first, apparently penned in 1837, reads:

Truly may it be said, that her valuable qualities have been sanctified; whilst her play of character has not been lost, but has been rendered more interesting than before. Every one who knows her is aware of her truthiness, and appreciates her kindness.

And there is this from 5 August 1844, where he notes the irony that the contradictions in the Bible demonstrate the authenticity of the writing:

How delightful have the Scriptures been to me of late season! I have been struck with the truthiness which is so evident in their apparent contradictions. These are generally capable of being reconciled; they do indeed mark the genuineness and authenticity of the whole.

The word has undoubtedly been independently coined several times over the decades and centuries, but finding actual uses in print is a rare occurrence. So while truthiness, meaning the quality of being truthful, has been in occasional use of the last couple of centuries, Stephen Colbert can lay fair claim to coining the twenty-first century sense of the word.

Sources:

Glowka, Wayne, et al. “Among the New Words.” American Speech, 81.2, Summer 2006, 180–202 at 199–200. DOI: 10.1215/00031283-2006-012.

Gurney, Joseph John. Memoirs of Joseph John Gurney, with Selections from His Journal and Correspondence, 2 vols. Joseph Bevan Braithwaite, ed. Philadelphia: Lippencott, Grambo, 1854, 1.252 and 2.443. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2015, s.v. truthiness, n.

Wilson, John. “Noctes Ambrosianae, No. LX.” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 31.190, February 1832, 255–88 at 272. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Zimmer, Benjamin. “Truthiness or Trustiness?” Language Log, 26 October 2005.

Image credit: The Colbert Report, Comedy Central, 2005. Fair use of a low-resolution still image from the television to illustrate the topic under discussion.