‘Post-truth’ has been named Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year, and has been used more around Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.

Usage of the adjective, which describes circumstances where emotions and personal beliefs are more influential than facts, increased by around 2000 per cent since last year, research showed.

It was first coined with this meaning was in a 1992 essay playwright Steve Tesich in The Nation magazine, according to Oxford Dictionaries.

The rise in popularity has coincided with the use of the phrase “post-truth politics”, which has been used this year in conjunction with the EU referendum and the US presidential race.

Post-truth was chosen from a shortlist that included “Brexiteer”, “alt-right” and “hygge”, a cosiness associated with contentment in Danish culture.

Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries, said: ‘It’s not surprising that our choice reflects a year dominated by highly-charged political and social discourse.

“Fuelled 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.

“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.”

Mr Grathwohl added: “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.”

Post-truth beat ‘alt-right’ and ‘hygge’ to be crowned word of the year by the Oxford Dictionary.Source:AP

A BuzzFeed News analysis found that in the final three months of US presidential campaign, the best performing news stories on Facebook received more engagement than top stories from major US news outlets such the New York Times, Washington Post and NBC News.

According to the analysis, 20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook.

During that same period, the 20 best-performing election stories from 19 major news websites generated a total of 7,367,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook.

It was the last three months ahead of the election that saw the engagement in fake election news on Facebook increase, according to the study.

Fake Facebook articles surrounding the election. Picture: AFP/Karen BleierSource:AFP

According to Oxford Dictionaries, the first time the term post-truth was used in this context was Mr Tesich’s essay on the Iran-Contra scandal and the Gulf War, writing that “we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world”.

The publisher said: “There is evidence of the phrase post-truth being used before Tesich’s article, but apparently with the transparent meaning ‘after the truth was known’, and not with the new implication that truth itself has become irrelevant.”

It pointed to the recent expansion in meaning of the prefix “post-”, saying that “rather than simply referring to the time after a specified situation or event — as in post-war or post-match”, in post-truth it had taken on the meaning of “belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become unimportant or irrelevant”.

post-truth: relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief

Oxford Dictionary

Normally a separate word is chosen for the US and UK editions of the dictionary, but Katherine Connor Martin, the head of the American version, explained: “What we found especially interesting is that [post-truth] encapsulated a trans-Atlantic phenomenon

“Often, when looking at words, you’ll find one that’s a really big deal in the UK but not in the US.”

Previous winners of the word of the year include “omnishambles” in 2012, “big society” in 2010 and last year’s hotly-debated “face with tears of joy” emoji.

The 2016 shortlist

Here are the others that were in the running for word of the year:

Adulting — The practice of behaving in a way characteristic of a responsible adult, especially the accomplishment of mundane but necessary tasks

Alt-right — An ideological grouping associated with extreme conservative or reactionary viewpoints, characterised by a rejection of mainstream politics and by the use of online media to disseminate deliberately controversial content

Brexiteer — A person who is in favour of the UK withdrawing from the European Union

Chatbot — A computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the internet

Coulrophobia — Extreme or irrational fear of clowns

Glass cliff — Used with reference to a situation in which a woman or member of a minority group ascends to a leadership position in challenging circumstances where the risk of failure is high

Hygge — A quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or wellbeing, regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture

Latinx — A person of Latin American origin or descent, used as a gender-neutral or non-binary alternative to Latino or Latina

Woke — Originally in African-American usage meaning alert to injustice in society, especially racism