ALONG with a vast army of two or three people, I always feel ambivalent about Word of the Year (Woty, to use the technical term) announcements, usually because they relate to fashion or, you know, computers.

You’re speaking to a man who wears supermarket trousers (I’ve a nasty feeling there’s a word for that) and who doesn’t tweet. Actually, hitching up my twousers – the word for such a person’s breeks – I see that last year’s Wotties were Brexit and Hygge, the former referring to a vote that liberals don’t like and the latter meaning kinda cosy, and pleasantly Scottiffied by The Herald the other day into “coorie”.

Lest you think I was talking out of my fundament in my opening bombshell paragraph, this year’s Wotties, as determined by Collins Dictionary, include “insta”, which I understand has something to do with photies on computers.

And while there isn’t much about fashion in the clothes sense, there is “Corbynmania”, meaning psychotically trendy enthusiasm for British Labour Party leader Jeremy of that ilk who, you may remember, came to Scotland earlier this year promising us things we already had.

A fascinating twist in this narrative concerns the fact that in the past I coined the term Trustomania, as a tongue-in-cheek word for spiralling membership at the National Trust. It didn’t catch on and, in its brief career, was in fact used – just getting my calculator out – a total of once.

But politics and media considerations top this year’s Collins list, headed as it is by “fake news” which, while I have my calculator out, comes to approximately two words. It’s really “concept of the year”, strictly speaking, and was popularised by Donald Trump, the world’s most powerful man (writing this from my bomb shelter).

To be fair to The Donald, he and his supporters receive a terrible press, and there can be few people left in the world who don’t realise that, furth of Herald Towers, much political reporting nowadays is really a form of activism.

Speaking of which, the other word that got a lot of attention this year was “Antifa”, after the supposedly anti-fascist activist group defined adroitly by the internet meme, “Everybody who disagrees with me is Hitler”.

What a state of affairs. New words tell us much about ourselves (generally speaking, that we’re somewhere on a continuum somewhere between loopy and bonkers), though “fake news” is nothing new, as Hugh McLachlan, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Glasgow Caledonian University, wrote in our columns this week.

It was used against witches. It was used against Cleopatra. It even put words into the mouth of Calgacus, First Minister of Ancient Caledonia, though these admittedly were good words.

I don’t want to strike a controversial note, but Donald Trump is no Calgacus. True, both have shared a concern with immigration (Roman in the case of Calgacus). But, while Calgacus, in my personal translation, spoke of the Romans offering a dessert when all he wanted was a piece, he wasn’t crass enough to say: “Make Caledonia great again.”

Even the SNP has rarely said anything more assertive than: “Under independence, Scotland could be quite good.” Perhaps Americans are just more linguistically brash, though Mark Twain thought pauses more effective than words.

Pretty difficult in a column, though, so moving swiftly on we note that Plato, Wittgenstein and thingummy – God – all recognised the fundamental importance of words. God’s ghost-written autobiography even begins, “In the beginning there was the Word”. We never learn which word, though I like to think it was “mellifluously” or “chiaroscuro” or “splang”.

Alas, new research reveals the Bible was also fake news. No one fed 5,000 punters with half a halibut or turned water into a cheeky wee rosé. However, I’m sure The Donald could satiate all his followers with a bottle of low-alcohol Bud and half a hake. But that would be hake news.

Another much-used expression identified by Collins this year was “echo chamber”, and I guess most of us regard these as ideal forums for debate: everything we say is greeted with approval because it’s only read by people with similar views. What would chance be, brothers and sisters? Correct: a fine thing.

Ach, Word of the Year is a fine thing when you think about it, because it makes us do just that: think. Think about where we’re at and where we’re going. Top word-wangler Willie Shakespeare said: “Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” Another moment’s thought and he might have put “go” before “to”. But there you go.

Imagine a world with no words. It just wouldn’t work (and, more importantly, neither would I). We wouldn’t know what to say. But, thankfully, as the Quite Good Book says: “In the beginning was the Word of the Year.”