Sub-prime has been voted the "word of the year" by the American Dialect Society in recognition of the mortgage scandal and crisis hat has saturated the news for months. The term implies cheap, often suspicious, mortgages. People across the country are encountering a variety of new words, or old words with new meanings, that describe the causes and effects
of the current state of the mortgage industry.

Exploding ARM has a ring of violence and, unfortunately, has become so for some families. It describes an adjustable-rate mortgage or which the interest rate escalates so quickly that borrowers, who could afford the monthly payments for the original mortgage, are driven out of their homes.

Foreclosure rescue sounds benevolent but it's not. It's more likely a scam to steal a home in which the owner is tricked into signing over title to the house in exchange for promises to pay off the arrears.

Jingle mail is the term being coined for troubled borrowers who abandon their homes sending the keys to the bank that holds the mortgage.

Liars' loans describes one form of come-on to potential home buyers where, presumably, mortgage companies have "practically begged borrowers to fib about their income."

Ninja loans, short for No Income, No Job or Assets, is the derisive way in which people are referring to loans made to unqualified buyers by unscrupulous lenders.

No-docs loans and low-docs loans are variations on the same theme - mortgage loans made by lenders hungry to get in on the action during the good years. Another variation is stated-income loans for which lenders took borrowers' claims at face value and did not ask for documentation of their ability to pay.

One-stop shop describes yet another sometimes-fraudulent operation, one that preys on unwary borrowers by offering packaged services including house, mortgage lawyer, inspector and appraiser.

Property flipping is what some real estate speculators do in neighborhoods where many houses have been foreclosed pushing down values. They buy at bargain prices and then quickly resell them, with fraudulent over-appraisals, to unsuspecting first-home buyers.

Upside down is the status of an estimated 9 million homeowners who bought during the high-priced years but now owe more than their houses are worth, making it impossible to refinance or sell for what they owe.

On a positive note, another new term, counseling and consumer-assistance agencies, refers to agencies that have been created to provide trained advisers to help families avoid foreclosure in the first place, stave it off when threatened and encourage lenders to work with families to save their homes.

From REIPA's "The Friday Letter," featuring excerpts from A sub subprime glossary for the mortgage scandal, an article by Jack Rosenthal, International Herald Tribune, Aug. 17, 2008.