‘Post-truth’ is word of the year and that’s a fact that should worry us

With everything else that has gone on, it is easy to forget we actually had a general election this year, writes Alison O’Connor.

This has been the year that Oxford dictionaries declared ‘post-truth’ to be its international word of the year. It’s hard to argue with the logic of that decision. But, equally, this was the year when we had so much hard truth to swallow. After what feels like 12 months of wall-to- wall negativity, 2017 can’t arrive a moment too soon.

Sometimes the different arms of the dictionary publishers in the UK and the US opt for different choices but this year there was no doubt on either side what they felt would “reflect the passing year in language”. It was a million miles away from last year’s choice of the “face with tears of joy” emoji. Well, this year that emoji face has had its little cutie mouth well and truly upended. In fact, the inherent cuteness of those darn emojis mean that not one of the myriad available could ever adequately reflect the seeming malevolence of what has gone on in the past 12 months, plus the sort of repercussions those events will have for years to come.