Plutoed

On August 24, 2006, the ninth planet in our solar system was plutoed by the International Astronomical Union. The scientists did not phrase their decision in those terms. Indeed almost nobody used pluto as a verb until January 5, 2007, when the American Dialect Society voted it Word of the Year, prompting worldwide headlines. “Pluto is finally getting some respect,” reported the Associated Press, and CNN noted, “Pluto may no longer be a planet, but it has a new claim to fame.” It was a good story for a slow news day, which is to say that the brouhaha over plutoed was a classic case of truthiness. Truthiness was the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year for 2005, a term made up by the comedian Stephen Colbert on his satirical TV news program, The Colbert Report, to denote something one believes is true based on a desire to believe it even if contradicted by factual information. His primary satirical target was President George W. Bush, but Colbert also meant the word to be a commentary on the media and the American public. While immeasurably less consequential than Bush’s tortuous foreign policy, the anointment of plutoed by the American Dialect Society, and the widespread coverage of the selection, can also be explained as a product of wishful thinking. The word was appealing because it was timely. Yet timeliness alone cannot account for its selection, especially given some of the other timely words with far more legitimate usage, such as waterboarding, also nominated. Whereas waterboarding was a battle-hardened military euphemism, plutoed was mere wordplay, a clever turn of phrase coined for the amusement of language lovers. One of the rare appearances of the term not referencing the American Dialect Society was an article published in the Montreal Gazette on January 10, 2007 (a date that nevertheless almost guarantees Word of the Year influence): “The feeling among some was that the ever-maligned Rona Ambrose, who was moved from being environment minister to minister of intergovernmental affairs, really got plutoed in last week’s federal cabinet shuffle.”