Notes on OED's June 2008 release of new words

subprime adj.

The term subprime has become all too familiar as a result of the current credit crisis, which is attributed in part to the proliferation of subprime loans—loans made on unfavourable terms to borrowers unable to qualify for conventional loans. While researching the term, OED editors were surprised to discover an earlier financial sense, with quite the opposite meaning. The familiar current sense is attested only from 1993, but as early as 1976, subprime was being used to describe an especially desirable type of loan, one which charged less than the prime rate of interest and was offered only to the most reliable commercial borrowers. That meaning is now rare, and in the new sense which has replaced it, it is not the interest rate of the loan which is "less than prime", but the rating of the borrowers themselves.

wantaway adj.

Reminiscent of the venerable getaway n., the evocative adjective wantaway also arises from a verbal phrase. Attested primarily in British use, it designates a person who "wants [to get] away", usually a professional football player who wants to transfer to a different club. Whereas the verbal phrase is a fairly neutral one, the adjective is typically used as a depreciative epithet, with connotations of greed and disloyalty.

cookie cutter n.

Readers may be surprised to note that the new entry for cookie cutter has three senses. Besides the original sense, denoting a utensil used to cut shapes from dough, cookie cutter has developed an adjectival use: since at least 1922 it has been used to describe things which are conformist or homogenous, a metaphorical reference to the identical shapes produced by a cookie cutter. The third use is more recent, dating to 1976, and extends the original sense more literally, referring to a type of small shark which feeds by taking small circular bites from larger marine animals. The cookie cutter shark leaves its victims alive, but with distinctive round patches removed from their skin like biscuits cut from dough.

radiophysics n.¹

In the OED, homographs (words which have the same spelling but different origins and meanings) are presented as separate headwords, each distinguished by a superscript number following the part of speech. Homograph pairs and groups have a tendency to breed more of their kind, since any parallel formations which develop from them will also be homographs. This is the case with the new entry radiophysics n.¹, referring to the branch of physics concerned with ionizing radiation. It complements the existing OED entry for radiophysics in the sense "the branch of physics concerned with the properties and applications of radio waves", which (being attested later) is now n.² The former comes from radio- comb. form², whereas the latter is from radio- comb. form³. This pair of homographic combining forms sparked a number of new entries completing homograph pairs in the newly revised range, including radio-photograph n.¹ and n.², radio-metal n.¹ and n.², and radio tagging n.¹ and n.²