Best Word of '07 Chosen

Well, I said I wasn't going to do a "look back at 2007" post, but I found this item to be kind of fun, so I thought, "What the hell".

The American Dialect Society (who knew there was such a thing?) held its annual convention last weekend, and its main order of business was to choose the top words and phrases of 2007. About 80 or so members gathered in Chicago for two days to debate which American English vocabulary items — not just words but phrases — were not only newly prominent, but also notable and impactful in the past year. The staff at the Hilton kept them supplied with coffee and danish as they the discussed the merits of contenders like "Facebook," "green," "Googleganger" and "waterboarding" before voting for an overall winner.

By the way, just to get this out of the way, my personal favorite is "Googleganger". According to the society, "Googleganger" is a play on "doppelganger". A Googleganger is a person with your name who shows up when you Google yourself.

Isn't that just delightful? Go try it, and see if you have any cool Googlegangers.

I actually have a couple of Googlegangers, but the most prominent seems to be a fairly well-received photographer. Heck, this blog is listed second when I Google "Sam Ogden". Maybe I'm gaining on my Googleganger. Perhaps one day I'll be at the top of the Sam Ogden list and the other Sam Ogdens will look up to me as the Sam Ogden Googleganger Extraordinaire.

Hey, one can dream.

But the other words discussed for word of the year were fun, too. I mean, "Facebook" is not only a top competitor of MySpace, the word itself can be used as a noun (The facebook had hundreds of selections from which my Googleganger with no face could select a mug.), a verb (I facebooked my Googleganger's ass.), or an adjective (My no-faced Googleganger's facebook selection only had one eye).

Several society members lobbied for "green," which designates environmental concern, but apparently "green" lost a bit of credibility when it was pointed out that the term has been around for years. And other members wanted "waterboarding".

Hmm . . . "green" and "waterboarding"? Seems even the American Dialect Society is divided along liberal and conservative lines.

At any rate, here are the words chosen by the American Dialect Society as 2007's best words or phrases:

• Word of the Year: Subprime, an adjective used to describe a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage or investment.
• Most Useful: Green, designates environmental concern.
• Most Creative: Googleganger, person with your name who shows up when you Google yourself.
• Most Unnecessary: Happy Kwanhanamas, Happy Holidays. Kwanza + Hanukkah + Christmas.
• Most Outrageous: Toe-tapper, a homosexual. Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, was arrested in June for an encounter in a Minneapolis airport bathroom in which toe-tapping was said to have been used as a sexual come-on.
• Most Euphemistic: Human terrain team, a group of social scientists employed by the U.S. military to serve as cultural advisers in Iraq or Afghanistan.
• Most Likely To Succeed: Green, designates environmental concern.
• Least Likely To Succeed: Strand-in, protest duplicating being stranded inside an airplane on a delayed flight.
• Real Estate/Mortgage/Loan Words (New category): Subprime.

Neither Behind Nor Ahead I Look

For this post, I was going to give a recap of the major issues and stories of 2007, and then detail my thoughts about what to expect for 2008.

Ohhhhh, but that would have been nice, wouldn't it?

I mean, picture it: Had I started to rehash all the old roads we traveled down last year, you would have been able to hear something like Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire playing in the background. And had I then segued into an optimistic outlook on the upcoming year . . . well, I'm sure there would have been some inspirational tune to accompany that, too. And possibly dancers, just because I like dancers.

The only problem is, that's what every blogger in the entire blogosphere blogged about in early January blog posts. (By the way, that's the most I've ever used the word "blog" or a variation thereof in a sentence in my entire life, and my hand to god, it's the last time I'll ever do it again.)

Besides, I get the distinct impression that we're all sick of the crap that transpired in 2007 anyway. The war in Iraq presses on without any end in sight. Bin Laden is still at large. Americans remain just a bunch of ultra-consuming fat asses dependent on oil. Brittany is a train wreck that we're forced to watch until we want to step in front of a bus. Baseball is in turmoil and the media that cover it are a joke. Television sucked when the writers were working, and now that they're on strike, it blows. And the presidential candidates started campaigning in 2006, so we've been sick of them. No one wants to hear about this crap anymore.

And 2008?

Well, we can always hope it will better than 2007. I guess we didn't set the mark very high last year, so things are looking good in that regard.

Still, if we've proven one thing over and over again down through the centuries, it's that no matter how many fresh starts we get, we can find a way to screw things up, almost effortlessly. Our affable, "Whoops. My bad" attitude has accompanied us through the years, like a boon companion. We are masters at subverting our potential, and then subverting it again when we get a do-over. Hey, it's just what we do.

And with a US presidential election on the horizon, not to mention a summer Olympics, and the constant, exponential dumbing down of everything in our culture, 2008 is bound to rank right down there with all the other years we've survived.

I don't mean to sound cynical or even pessimistic. I'm just making assumptions based on observations I've made over the years. And even if we do screw everything up, like we have in the past, that's no reason to be down or depressed. Let's face it, our shortcomings and failures are way more entertaining than our successes. And we pretty much have to laugh at the failures that are dangerous or hurtful, because the only other option in those cases is to cry, and no one wants to cry this early in the year. We can wait at least until after Valentine's Day for that, can't we?

So let's just do what we do, and don't anticipate anything grand for 2008. The entertainment value in that approach is built in. And hey, if we do end up achieving something, if we do actually progress human society in some meaningful way, it will be totally unexpected and a completely wonderful surprise.