"act or quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than those known to be true," a catch word popularized in this sense by U.S. comedian Stephen Colbert (b.1964), declared by American Dialect Society to be "2005 Word of the Year." It was used in 1832 in a sense "habit of telling the truth," from truthy "characterized by truth" (1800), from truth, n. + -y(2).