Monday's San Francisco Examiner has an article titled "Mother of All
Cliches -- American Dialect Society is about to choose Word of the Year".

The article states in part:

Executive secretary of the society is Allan A. Metcalf, professsor
at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill. With David K.
Barnhart, he has just published "America in So Many Words."
It lists the authors' choice of Word of the Year as far back as 1555.

Among the Word-of-the-Year winners:

Bathtub (1869): Mark Twain put it into print in "Innocents
Abroad," ignoring the British term "bathing tub."

The entire article is online at:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/examiner/article.cgi?year=1997&month=12&day=
29&article=EDITORIAL10300.dtl

or can be found by using the search engine at:
http://www.sfgate.com/search

Barb