Word of the Year 2008: Name of the Year

The American Dialect Society (ADS) and American Name Society (ANS) plan to anoint the Words of the Year 2008 (WOTY 2008) in about a week.

So what will the Name of the Year be? C'mon, you know as well as I. Barack Hussein Obama can be expected to take the prize, perhaps dominating the competition even more than Pluto in 2006.

Yeah, for a while I thought Joe [the Plumber] might have a shot, and I think I came up with some other clever angle, but I was only kidding myself. After George, Bill, George, Ronald, Jimmy, and their ilk, Barack Hussein Obama is a truly revolutionary name for these troubled times.

Spread the Word: 'Tis the Season!

Yes, it's word season again at Blog About Town as the selection of Word of the Year draws nearer and nearer!

This year we usher in the season with a very special The Sarah Silverman Show, brought to you by Language Log.

Enjoy!

BREAKING: SUBPRIME IS WORD OF THE YEAR 2007!

Betray Us Takes Name of the Year 2007

Step aside, plutoed! It's time for subprime to take over the spotlight as Word of the Year 2007!

"Subprime is an adjective used to describe a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage, or investment. Subprime was also winner of a brand-new 2007 category for real estate words, a category which reflects the preoccupation of the press and public for the past year with a deepening mortgage crisis," says a statement at the American Dialect Society (ADS) website.

The ADS press release (PDF) sheds light on some of the intricacies behind the selection of subprime. I have qualms about a number of the picks—mainly because a bunch just seem so old and established that they seem more worthy of Lifetime Achievement Awards—but who am I to argue with card-carrying members of the ADS?

Possibly in recognition of the gross mismanagement that has prevailed in the real estate industry under the Bush administration, this was the first year that the ADS dedicated a category to Real Estate/Mortgage/Loan Words. In that category, NINJA had a strong showing with 34 votes compared to exploding ARM (10 votes), scratch and dent loan (2 votes) and liar's loan/liar loan (1 vote). But 2007 turned out to be the year for veteran word subprime, which received 65 votes.

Another old-timer, green-, made a strong showing in other categories. It mopped up Most Likely To Succeed, winning 70 votes. Left in the sudbucket were locavore (13), wide stance, to have a (13), texter (5), global weirding (3), and Super-Duper Tuesday/Tsunami Tuesday (1).

Nominee green- also prevailed in Most Useful. In the initial vote, green- garnered 43 votes and wrap rage got 39, followed by bacn (14), celebu- (13), and connectile dysfunction (5). Then green- edged out wrap rage in the run-off, 59-55.

Under Most Creative, lovable lolcat racked up 20 votes, but Googlegänger scared it off with 84. Way behind were tapafication (4) and boom (1).

Blog About Town thought va-j-j/va-jay-jay/vajayjay was a real contender for Most Euphemistic, but it only received 30 votes—enough to crush shmashmortion/shmushmortion (8) but not enough to steal the thunder from human terrain team (60).

Another stunner in this corner of the blogosphere was the winner of Most Outrageous. BAT favorite nappy-headed ho garnered 27 votes, but the tame toe-tapper took the trophy with a stunning 70 votes, while make it rain dribbled in with a mere 2.

One might think that a tested word such as green- would be a formidable foe in the Word of the Year round, but the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of subprime (79). Trailing far back were Facebook (11), green- (9), Googlegänger (7), wide stance, to have a (2), waterboarding (1), and surge (1).

In the category of Most Unnecessary, Happy Kwanhanamas! won with 63 over vegansexual (35) and truther (5).

And, in the intense battle for Least Likely to Succeed, quadriboobage (40) made a strong initial showing against earmarxist (32) and strand-in (31), which ultimately received the dubious honor with 74 votes over quadriboobage (19) and earmarxist (2). Knocked out of play in the first round was Billary/Hill-Bill (1), suggesting that the ADS doesn't place too much stock in Iowa caucus results.

And, as noted in the header, the American Name Society named Betray Us as its Name of the Year 2007.

Previous coverage here.

WORD OF THE YEAR 2007 NOMINATIONS: FIRST CUT!

Yeah yeah yeah...Obama and Huckabee blah blah blah. The real news is that the first cut has been made for Words of the Year 2007!

Larry Craig and real estate words are prominent in this year's crop. Click here for the offical PDF.

MOST USEFUL
bacn
celebu- (are you happy now, Trapezia?)
connectile dysfunction
green-
wrap rage ("anger brought on by the frustration of trying to open a factory-sealed purchase")

MOST CREATIVE
boom (military: left of boom/right of boom)
Googlegänger
lolcat (yes!)
tapafication

MOST UNNECESSARY
Happy Kwanhanamas!
truther
vegansexual

MOST OUTRAGEOUS
nappy-headed ho (this has got to be the winner)
make it rain
toe-tapper

MOST EUPHEMISTIC
human terrain team
shmashmortion/smushmortion
va-j-j/va-jay-jay/vajayjay (one of my nominations)

MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED
global weirding
green- (looking like a huge favorite, though I don't think it's really a 2007 word)
Super-Duper Tuesday/Tsunami Tuesday
wide stance, to have a (this looks much more like a 2007 word with, um, legs)

LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEED
Billary/Hill-Bill
earmarxist
quadriboobage
strand-in
strike beard

REAL ESTATE WORDS
exploding ARM
liar's loan/liar loan
NINJA
scratch and debt loan
subprime (is this really a 2007 word?)

WORD OF THE YEAR 2007: NOMINATIONS

Here are three sets of nominations from members of the American Dialect Society for Word of the Year 2007, to be determined tomorrow. You can get more details by following the links.

From David Barnhart:

by-stander effect
breeder document
CFL
chipmunking
congestion fee
cringe reading
crowd sourcing
cut and walk
dwell time
e-mailitis
evo-devo
Facebook
format-agnostic
geofencing
Green Monday
Green Tuesday
mash-up
MRSA
no-e-mail Friday
no-match letter
Oprah effect
parkour
quorum sensing
Waldo (play Waldo or place where's Waldo)
Zumba

From Grant Barrett:

astronaut diaper
atmospherics
bacn
bitch
boot camp flu
boom (left of boom and right of boom)
chief sustainability officer
colony collapse disorder
crowdsource
drama-price
draw-down
email bankruptcy
earmarxist
exaflood
exploding ARM
forever stamp
FTW
global weirding
gorno
guap
-hawk
ho
hooter-hider
hypermile
hyphenate
I-reporter
islamofascism
jailbreak
kinnear
liar's loan/liar loan
life-stream
lip dub
lolcat
lopomo
make it rain
maternal profiling
meat tag
mobisode
mom job (mommy makeover)
multi-dad
nappy-headed ho
Navy shower
nigger, death of
NINJA
nose bidet
pap
pecha-kucha
phonemarking
post-kinetic environment
rape stand
rick-roll
scratch and dent loan
side boob
smeet
show-runner
Super-Duper Tuesday
splurge (for troop surge)
subprime
Tivoization
toe-tapper
truther
Tsunami Tuesday
tumblelog
va-j-j/va-jay-jay/vajayjay
vegansexual
walkshed
waterboarding
wide stance, to have a
windshield cowboy

From Wayne Glowka:

The Big Rip
Bom Chicka Wah Wah
celbutard
connectile disfunction
cornhole
Don't tase me, bro!
fenjoozler
flying Lincoln bedroom
General Betray Us
Global Warming
Googlegänger
Happy Kwanhanamas!
Hill-Bill
human terrain team
nappy headed ho's
nurdle
roboho
strand-in
squirt
Sushi
Truther
two-car insurance seminar

As for my own nominations, I'm adding

caging
shopdropping

to my list:

belief tank
botnet
chemo brain
efforting
favorited
glutened
Juneuary
mumblecore/mumblecorps
permalancer
PowerPoint Ranger
rehab
school shooter
shipper
-tard
vajayjay
yoga stick

WORD OF THE YEAR 2007: EXPANDED NOMINEE LIST!

Back in August 2007 I offered nine early candidates. Here they are again (including an enhanced entry for rehab), plus seven others.

belief tank

botnet

chemo brain ("Chemo brain is part of the language now, and just to have it acknowledged makes a difference,” said Anne Grant, 57, who owns a picture-framing business in New York City. Ms. Grant, who had high-dose chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant in 1995, said she could not concentrate well enough to read, garbled her sentences and struggled with simple decisions like which socks to wear.—New York Times, April 29, 2007).

efforting ("The stinkiest addition to the language is 'efforting'—as in TV producers saying, 'I'm efforting a picture we can use of Lindsay Lohan.' Please—I'm efforting to vomit, darling."—Michael Musto, The Village Voice, February 7-13, 2007)

favorited (noted by David Bergdahl)

glutened (A word used by people on gluten-free diets to describe having eaten the forbidden substance, as in "I spent 20 minutes going over my diet with the new chef, but I got glutened anyway.") Also of note: In 2007, gluten-free products boomed even as the FDA continued to work to define the term on product labels.

Juneuary

mumblecore/mumblecorps

permalancer (Goes back at least to 1996, but surged this year.)

PowerPoint Ranger (seen in Doonesbury; also, "'PowerPoint Ranger' is a derogatory term for a desk-bound bureaucrat more adept at making slides than tossing grenades.")

rehab (It's been around for a while, but it seemed to take on a new life—or a new nuance?—in terms of media/celebrity coverage since the beginning of 2007.) Addendum: How about "a celebrity career stage during which publicists claim the celebrity is taking care of substance abuse or other scandalous issues when the celeb actually seems to be making a token gesture to avoid negative publicity and minimize the risk of a harsh court order"? Dan Radosh: "I give them a year till rehab."

school shooter (Students interviewed at Virginia Tech seemed to have a clear a priori understanding of the meaning of this term.)

shipper (A fandom term used since the late 1990s, it might have gained traction this year.)

-tard ("Retarded has even spawned new words: celebutard, a famous stupid person; debutard, a rich stupid person; e-tard, a stupid Internet user -- stupid being the common denominator, and "tard" a suffix and a word in itself. ("Tard: Adjective used to describe one so retarded, they do not deserve the 're' " -- Urban Dictionary.)&mdash: Boston Globe, March 25, 2007)

vajayjay

yoga stick (A phrase that was used to describe a particular murder weapon in 2007 even though no one seemed able to define it, though Gay Socialites had come up with an image and explanation. Perhaps this could be considered for Worst Defined or Least Defined or Most Mysterious or Most Elusive or Most Recklessly Used....)

Photo: David Marc Fischer

WORD OF THE YEAR 2007: EARLY CANDIDATES

Here are some words I noticed this year (once or twice with the help of a friend):

belief tank

botnet

efforting ("The stinkiest addition to the language is 'efforting'—as in TV producers saying, 'I'm efforting a picture we can use of Lindsay Lohan.' Please—I'm efforting to vomit, darling."—Michael Musto, The Village Voice (Feb 7-13, 2007)

favorited (noted by David Bergdahl)

Juneuary

PowerPoint Ranger (seen in Doonesbury; also, "'PowerPoint Ranger' is a derogatory term for a desk-bound bureaucrat more adept at making slides than tossing grenades.")

rehab (It's been around for a while, but it seemed to take on a new life—or a new nuance?—in terms of media/celebrity coverage since the beginning of 2007.)

school shooter (Students interviewed at Virginia Tech seemed to have a clear a priori understanding of the meaning of this term.)

shipper (A fandom term used since the late 1990s, it might have gained traction this year.)