What's the word, Thunderbird?

You may not know this old joke, but pardon me if you do:

Grandmother to teen girl: There are two words that I wish you would stop using. One is swell and the other is lousy.

Teen girl: OK Granny! What are they?

It's authentically true that Merriam-Webster’s 2023 Word of the Year Is ‘Authentic’!

It's harder and harder these days to tell what's authentic. You look for a suede jacket, and the salesperson tells you, "Well, this is Ultrasuede!"

Which means fake suede.

There was the ad for women's wigs that said, "It's not fake anything; it's real Dynel!"

Everyone says everything is the real thing, no fake nothin', but only real is real. As Frankie Valli sang in the "Grease" theme song, 

Their lips are lyin', only real is real

We stop the fight right now, we got to be what we feel

Grease is the word

Only real is real. 

Peter Sokolowski, editor-at-large of Merriam-Webster's word book, says, “We sometimes don’t believe our own eyes or our own ears. We are now recognizing that authenticity is a performance itself.”

Merriam-Webster has long classified "authentic" among the words that are looked up quite a bit, but this year, more and more of us are confused about just what authentic is, and what it means to be authentic.

Easy to understand, when there is artificial intelligence trying to fake us out and out-and-out liars like that George Santos, the disgraced booted-out congressman who told every lie short of saying he was really Tom Brady (and wouldn't that explain a lot, were it true!?)

This Reggie White Packers jersey seems to lack a certain authenticity.

Elon Musk, owner of what used to be Twitter, is always hollering about being honest and for real, so what does he do but start selling the little blue checkmark that used to mean the person writing was who he or she said they were. Now you can plunk down some money every month and claim to be Mr Peanut.

Help! Send more authenticity!