“In its 18th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted “subprime” as the word of the year. Subprime is an adjective used to describe a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage, or investment. Subprime was also winner of a brand-new 2007 category for real estate words, a category which reflects the preoccupation of the press and public for the past year with a deepening mortgage crisis. “
The newsreader on NPR mentioned that subprime has turned into a verb used by teenagers. “I subprimed that test” = “I did not perform well on that test.” Ha, ha, ha…