Just in time to get 2008 off to a "sweet" start, Lake Superior State University has published its "33rd Annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness.
Described by the school as the first such list (at least in modern times), the list is compiled from suggestions submitted to LSSU, which is located in Sault Ste. Marie in far Northern Mich.
One in particular gigs me - wordsmith/wordsmithing - since my lovely wife often calls me that. However, she also often intones "it is what it is," which is another outta-here phrase in this year's list (and one of my personal choices for the scrapyard).
Our designers will be chagrined that the list includes "pop" - as in, "the color choice for the print really makes it pop." Maybe we can teach ourselves to "decimate" the use of "pop" - decimate in the true sense of reducing by a tenth, not obliteration as it has come to be used.
Anyway, enjoy this year's list. You'll have to use the search function for lists from "back in the day" - the best keyword to use is "banishment."
Comments (1)
I think that's a sweet list of terms we should decimate in 2008. A warning, however: Reading them is like getting warterboarded. Benefiting from a perfect storm, these once red-hot clichés are no longer the new black -- nor are they the new Black Friday, for that matter. I don't mean to be throwing their creators under-the-bus (that would be an emotional scene), but back-in-the-day when things were-what-they-were, the terms we authored weren't so random. Back then, clichés grew organically, so I can't figure out where these terms come from these days. Do the wordsmiths who create them plan some surge attack and then have webinars on how to get them spread? I'm sorry, but in this Post 9/11 world if we use these cliches then the terrorists have won.
Posted by Rex Hammock | January 1, 2008 11:18 PM
Posted on January 1, 2008 23:18