In 2006, it was to pluto. In 2005, truthiness. And last Friday the American Dialect Society announced its 2007 Word of the Year: subprime.

In making the announcement, Professor Wayne Glowka, chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society, observed, “When you have investment companies losing billions of dollars over something like bundled subprime loans, then you have to consider whether it’s important.” He added, “You probably also want to think about paying off that third mortgage.”

The Society consists of “linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, authors, editors, professors, university students, and independent scholars” (that last one must include English teachers). Bring them to Chicago for a convention, and they’ll start talking about words: they can’t help themselves.

Subprime won overall, but, like the Oscars, there are multiple categories and winners:

• Most Useful (also named Most Likely to Succeed): the prefix green- to “designate environmental concern”
• Most Creative: Googlegänger, “person with your name who shows up when you google yourself”
• Most Unnecessary: Happy Kwanhanamas! [Kwanza + Hanukka + Christmas]
• Most Outrageous: toe-tapper, a homosexual (think: Senator Larry Craig)
• Least Likely to Succeed: strand-in, a “protest duplicating being stranded inside an airplane on a delayed flight.”

Read the entire press release.

I like the way they pass the honor around among the parts of speech. Two years ago, it was a noun. Last year it was a verb, and this year it’s an adjective. In 1992, even an interjection (Not!) was Word of the Year. We’ll know we have true linguistic equity when a conjunction wins the honor. Coordinating, subordinating, correlative … I’m not picky.

Posted Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:01:40 and filed under Vocabulary, eNotes. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.