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Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2521
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 07, 2008 - 11:35 am: | 
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"Subprime."
Still on my language kick so I enjoyed this piece. I am currently in the process of buying/selling so the word chosen was relevant to my life. However, I was more intrigued by one of the runners-up: "Googleganger." A while back while self-googling, I found a couple of newspaper articles in another city about a woman with my name who had been killed in a drug deal gone bad. I have to say, I was somewhat disconcerted by seeing my name in such a context! LOL
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22514839/?GT1=10755
CHICAGO - Even the American Dialect Society knows how risky home mortgages are these days. The group of wordsmiths chose "subprime" as 2007's Word of the Year at its annual convention Friday.
"'Subprime' has been around with bankers for awhile, but now everyone is talking about 'subprime,'" said Wayne Glowka, a spokesman for the group and a dean at Reinhardt College in Waleska, Ga. "It's affecting all kinds of people in all kinds of places."
About 80 members of the organization spent two days debating the merits of runners-up "Facebook," "green," "Googleganger" and "waterboarding" before voting for an adjective that means "a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage or investment."
...But what's a "Googleganger?"
A play on "doppelganger," the word is "a person with your name who shows up when you Google yourself," according to the society.
...The ghostly double of a word won the 2007 "Most Creative" designation.
As for "subprime," Glowka said it is an odd word — at least as far as linguists are concerned.
The prefix "sub" translates roughly to "below the standard," while "prime" means something close to "the best."
So, according to Glowka, the word really means "far below the best."
"People were saying that students were referring to their tests, `I'm going to subprime this; I'm going to mess it up,'" he said.
The American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, comprises linguists, grammarians, historians and scholars, among others...
In 2006, the organization chose "plutoed," which means "to be demoted or devalued."
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 6067
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 07, 2008 - 11:55 am: |
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I still got that Yvettep story to post.... |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 11102
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 07, 2008 - 12:34 pm: |
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As a person who is fascinated with etymology and semantics I found this article interesting. |
Enchanted
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Enchanted
Post Number: 1126
Registered: 11-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 07, 2008 - 01:12 pm: |
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word of the year is "CHANGE duh! |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2526
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 08, 2008 - 07:58 am: |
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Chris: ??????
Cynique, you'd probably be interested in some of the books I've been reading lately. Maybe I'll do a "group review" when I finish them. 
Enchanted: Yes, certainly in the political arena the current word of choice seems to be "change." |
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