Possibilities in German to minimize a term?

Question

I stumbled upon the English term Truthiness

"truth" that a person claims to know intuitively "from the gut" in that it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts

I like this word very much, especially in the context of conspiracy theories.

But it seems impossible to translate as a single German word, despite German having common diminutive suffixes like -chen.

What are general common rules and colloquial options to minimize (verniedlichen) German terms by using suffixes and/or phonetic tricks?

Answer 1

Truthiness isn't a minimization of the word truth, though — what Colbert did when he invented that phrase was incorrectly turn the word truth into the adjective truthy by adding -y to it (correct adjective would be "true", of course), and then turn it back into a noun by adding -ness.

If you wanted to do a similar thing to the word Wahrheit, you'd end up with Wahrheitlichkeit or Wahrheitigkeit, or, if you want fewer syllables, you can start out with wahr and get Wahrlichkeit or Wahrigkeit.

Out of those options, I like "Wahrheitlichkeit" best, but none of them are quite as funny or pithy as "truthiness".

In general, you can minimize German terms by adding the suffixes -chen (Schirmchen, Kätzchen) or -lein (Häuslein, Tischlein). The vowel often becomes an umlaut when you do this.

German dialects also have minimizing suffixes of their own, e.g. -le in Swabian or -erl in Bavarian.

Answer 2

It should be pointed out, that "truthiness" is a coined word (by Stephen Colbert in this case, with the intention to make a joke). So basically, you could equally make up a German word:

Wahrheitchen,

Wahrheitlein,

Wahrheitle (schwäbisch),

Wahrheiterl (bayrisch),

Wirklichkeitchen,

Wirklichkeitigkeit (intentionally violating usual rules of constructing a word),

Wahrhaftigkeitchen,

Wahrhäftchen,

...

None of these words exist in the dictionary (yet), and admittedly, none of them sound as good or as funny as Truthiness.