Mythbuster

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Someone who investigates widely held beliefs and rumours to test whether they are actually true
2. A person who sets out to expose common misconceptions by checking them against evidence and experiment
3. One who examines popular claims and legends in order to show which ones are false and which hold up

Etymology: "Mythbuster" is built from two existing English words: "myth," a traditional story or widely held belief, and "buster," a person who breaks or defeats something, from the verb "bust." Put together, the word describes someone who breaks apart popular beliefs by testing them against evidence. The second element carries most of the flavor. "Buster" was a common informal suffix in American English for people who tackle or smash a thing, as in "trustbuster" for someone who breaks up monopolies, or "ghostbuster" for someone who hunts spirits. The pattern gives the word a sense of confrontation: a myth is treated less like a fact to be examined than like a stronger opponent to be toppled. The word is now most closely tied to the television series "MythBusters," which put common beliefs about how the world works to physical experiments. Its popularity spread the noun into everyday use for anyone who checks a popular claim and shows whether it holds up.

Synonyms: debunker, skeptic, iconoclast

Antonyms: believer