"'Subprime' Word of the Year"

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.

While change has trumped experience as the key word of the election primaries, subprime was 2007's Word of the Year for the American Dialect Society. Runners-up include green and waterboarding. Besides its conventional use in the mortgage crises, subprime has taken on new meanings. A spokesman for the group says students now use the word to refer to tests — as in I subprimed this, or messed it up.