IN a year of political shocks it may come as no surprise that Oxford Dictionaries has decided that 'post-truth' (an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals) is their 2016 international word of the year.

The BBC reports Oxford Dictionaries' spokesman Casper Grathwohl as saying that post-truth could become “one of the defining words of our time”.

He commented: “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.”

A selection of headlines from stories in the news. They use English in a way that you might think is intended to confuse but it's all perfectly clear to the native speaker.

A selection of headlines from stories in the news. They use English in a way that you might think is intended to confuse but it's all perfectly clear to the native speaker.

News Round Up

THE Daily Mirror reports that compensation claims in schools in England and Wales over the last three years have cost more than £10million including almost £600 after a pupil was struck by a piece of apple.

Somerset County Council spent £575 on the legal battle over the apple after the pupil sued his school.

News Round Up

by Patrick O'Connor

IT always makes staggering reading to see what sort of crazy reasons people come up with for dialling the emergency services 999 number.

A story in The Guardian quoted examples such as a caller who rang police 23 times asking for a lift from Hartlepool to Stockton and a 17-year-old girl whose hoax call about a bomb in Middlesbrough town centre caused chaos as the whole area was evacuated.