You would like subprime loan?

While TIME Magazine raised some eyebrows by naming Vladimir Putin its person of the year, the American Dialect Society is unlikely to generate much controversy by declaring "subprime" the word of the year for 2007. After all -- unlike the ADS' word of the year for 2006, Plutoed* -- subprime has become a household word. For those who still have homes. 

The subprime lending crisis prompted ADS -- "linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, authors, editors, professors, university students, and independent scholars" who share an interest in "the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it" -- to create a new category for real estate words, reflecting "the preoccupation of the press and public for the past year with a deepening mortgage crisis."

ADS members were also taken with the terms exploding ARM, liar’s loan, NINJA loan (no income, no job or assets) and scratch and dent loan (see press release).

OK, so if Putin is the person of the year and subprime is the word of the year, maybe it's time for him to order the Russian oil companies he's reasserted control of to take all that money they're making selling oil to strapped U.S. consumers at $100 a barrel and put it into the secondary mortgage market.

*"To demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet ." 

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