The word(s) of the year, sometimes capitalized as "Word(s) of the Year" and abbreviated "WOTY" (or "WotY"), refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word(s) or expression(s) in the public sphere during a specific year. The German tradition, Wort des Jahres was started in 1971. The American Dialect Society's Word of the Year is the oldest English-language version, and the only one that is announced after the end of the calendar year, determined by a vote of independent linguists, and not tied to commercial interest. However, various other organizations also announce Words of the Year for a variety of purposes. American Dialect Society Since 1990, the American Dialect Society (ADS) has designated one or more words or terms to be the "Word of the Year" in the United States 1990: bushlips (similar to "bullshit" – stemming from President George H. W. Bush's 1988 "Read my lips: no new taxes" broken promise) 1991: mother of all (as in Saddam Hussein's foretold "Mother of all battles") 1992: Not! (meaning "just kidding") 1993: information superhighway 1994: cyber, morph (to change form) 1995: web and (to) newt (to act aggressively as a newcomer, like Speaker Newt Gingrich during the Contract with America) 1996: mom (as in "soccer mom") 1997: millennium bug 1998: e- (as in "e-mail" or "e-commerce") 1999: Y2K 2000: chad (from the 2000 presidential election controversy in Florida) 2001: 9-11 2002: weapons of mass destruction (WMD) 2003: metrosexual 2004: red state, blue state, purple state (from the 2004 United States presidential election) 2005: truthiness (popularized on The Colbert Report) 2006: plutoed (demoted or devalued, as happened to the former planet Pluto) 2007: subprime (an adjective used to describe a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage, or investment) 2008: bailout (in the specific sense of the rescue by the government of companies on the brink of failure, including large players in the banking industry) 2009: tweet (a short, timely message sent via the Twitter.com service, and verb, the act of sending such a message) 2010: app (an abbreviated form of application, a software program for a computer or phone operating system) 2011: occupy (verb or noun inspired from the Occupy movements of 2011) 2012: hashtag (a word or phrase preceded by a hash symbol (#), used on Twitter to mark a topic or make a commentary) 2013: because introducing a noun, adjective, or other part of speech (e.g.,