Subprime voted 2007 word of the year by American Dialect Society.

In its 18th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted subprime as the word of the year for 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," the ADS said.

Wayne Glowka--the chair of the ADS New Words Committee, dean of arts and humanities at Reinhardt College, and a columnist in the society's quarterly journal American Speech--said:

"When you have investment companies losing billions of dollars over something like bundled subprime loans, then you have to consider whether it's important," Professor Glowka said. "You probably also want to think about paying off that third mortgage."

The Word of the Year is interpreted in its broader sense as a "vocabulary item"--not just words but phrases. The words or phrases do not have to be brand-new, but they have to be newly prominent or notable in the past year, in the manner of Time magazine's Person of the Year.

The vote is the longest-running such vote anywhere, the only one not tied to commercial interests, and the word-of-the-year event up to which all others lead, ADS claims. It is fully informed by the members' expertise in the study of words, but it is far from a solemn occasion.

  In conducting the vote, they act in fun and do not pretend to be
  officially inducting words into the English language. Instead, they
  are highlighting that language change is normal, ongoing, and
  entertaining.

Who votes

Members in the 118-year-old organization include linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, authors, editors, professors, university students, and independent scholars.

Runners up

Competing for top honors were green as a prefix or compounding form (e.g., green-washing); Facebook (all parts of speech); waterboarding, and googleganger.

Googleganger, a play on doppleganger, means a person with your name who shows up when you Google yourself. It received top votes as the most creative word.

www.americandialect.org