Trending

Seeing the truthiness of the subprime mess

<i>Crisis catchphrase beats tech lingo for word of the year</i>

Does the word “plutoed” mean anything to you? How about “truthiness?” Both have something in common with a word that’s been on the tip of everyone’s tongue lately: subprime.

Last month, the American Dialect Society voted subprime its 2007 word of the year. The honor means that the word will join the ranks of plutoed, which took the top spot in 2006 and means “to demote someone or something” (as happened to Pluto when the International Astronomical Union decided the celestial body no longer met its definition of a planet), and truthiness, which was the top word in 2005 (meaning “the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true,” a phrase popularized on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report”).

The ADS, whose members include linguists, etymologists and grammarians, is an 118-year-old organization that has crowned a word of the year for the past 18 years. But 2007 marks the first time it included a special category for real estate.

Other real estate-related words or phrases in the running were “exploding ARM” (an adjustable rate mortgage that rises beyond a borrower’s ability to pay); “liar’s loan/liar loan” (money borrowed from a financial institution under false pretenses); “NINJA” (“no income, no job or assets,” which refers to a poorly documented loan made to a high-risk borrower); and “scratch and dent loan” (a loan or mortgage that has become a risky debt investment, especially one made by a borrower who has missed payments).

In addition to beating out other real estate terms, subprime had stiff competition from the words Facebook, green and Googlegänger (another person with the same name who shows up when you Google yourself).

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

Wayne Glowka, a spokesperson for the ADS, said the organization’s selection of subprime, as well as the inclusion of a category for real estate, speaks to the national preoccupation with the state of the housing market.

“Real estate words were given special attention because the trouble in the real estate sector affected lots of people last year, and taught the rest of us a number of terms that were new to us, like ‘subprime’ and ‘exploding ARM,'” said Glowka.

Although subprime is currently not included in many dictionaries, Glowka said he thinks that’s going to change.

“Dictionaries have missed the term, which is at least 10 years old, because dictionary editors like me are not all that
familiar with real estate and mortgages, other than the fact that we hate paying them,” he said.

A Nexis search of major newspapers—a category that includes 107 sources and leading publications like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post—found “subprime” 24,942 times last year. In addition, the word has been a regular in the pages of The Real Deal.

Of course, in an ideal world, the word and the underlying crisis will disappear. Here’s hoping that by next year, the subprime crisis will have plutoed.

Recommended For You