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In its 19th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted “bailout†as the word of the year. In the specific sense used most frequently in 2008, bailout refers to the rescue by the government of companies on the brink of failure, including large players in the banking industry.
Presiding at the Jan. 9 voting session were ADS Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf of McMurray College, and Grant Barrett, chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society and co-host of the nationwide public radio show A Way with Words. Barrett is also the incoming editor of the column “Among the New Words†in the society's quarterly academic journal American Speech.
“When you vote for bailout, I guess you're really voting for ‘hope' and ‘change,' too,†Barrett said. “Though you'd think a room full of pointy-headed intellectuals could come up with something more exciting.â€
Read more in the 2008 Word of the Year press release.
Ben Zimmer at Visual Thesaurus has a report on the vote, as well as some video of the runoff.
I heard some of the list of words derived from "Obama" on NPR this motning. I don't know if this one made the list: "Obamanos". Yes, I know that it's Spanglish at best, and a play on words (the Spanish "Vamanos", meaning, "Let's go!"), like all the other "Obama" words. It can be interpreted a lot of ways, but to me it means "Let's get moving forward with Obama". e.g. "The economy is a mess, and we need to fix it. Obamanos!"
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
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