Since 1975, the wordmeisters at Lake Superior State University have submitted for the world’s edification and delight an annual “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.”
For additional commentary that accompanies each entry, check out the university’s Web site.
And now, without further ado, the 2010 list of banished words:
SHOVEL-READY — “Stick a shovel in it. It’s done.”
TRANSPARENT/TRANSPARENCY — “I just don’t see it.”
CZAR — “We have appointed a czar of such-and-such; clearly that’s better than a ‘leader,’ ‘coordinator’ or ‘director’!”
TWEET (and all of its variations: tweetaholic, retweet, twitterhea, twitterature, twittersphere …) — “People tweet and retweet and I just heard the word ‘tweet’ so many times it lost all meaning.”
APP — “Is there an ‘app’ for making this annoying word go away? Why can’t we just call them ‘programs’ again?”
SEXTING — “Any dangerous new trend that also happens to have a clever mash-up of words, involves teens, and gets television talk show hosts interested must be banished.”
FRIEND AS A VERB — “‘Befriend’ is much more pleasant to the human ear and a perfectly useful word in the dictionary.”
TEACHABLE MOMENT — “This phrase is used to describe everything from potty-training to politics. It’s time to vote it out!”
IN THESE ECONOMIC TIMES — “Overused and redundant. Aren’t ALL times ‘these economic times’?”
STIMULUS — “Everything in the news is about the stimulus packages…it is no longer a grant, it’s stimulus money, stimulus checks, etc. I think it is just being over-used.”
TOXIC ASSETS — “Whatever happened to simply ‘bad stocks,’ ‘debts,’ or ‘loans’?”
TOO BIG TO FAIL — “Does such a thing exist? We’ll never know if a company is too big to fail, unless somehow it does fail, and then it will no longer be too big to fail. Make it stop!”
BROMANCE — “I am sick of combined words the media creates to make them sound catchier. Frenemies? Bromances? Blogorrhea? I’m going to scream!”
CHILLAXIN’ — “Heard everywhere from MTV to ESPN to CNN. A bothersome term that seeks to combine chillin’ with relaxin’ makes me want to be ‘axin’ this word.”
OBAMA-prefix or roots — The LSSU Word Banishment Committee held out hope that folks would want to Obama-ban Obama-structions, but were surprised that no one Obama-nominated any, such as these compiled by the Oxford Dictionary in 2009: Obamanomics, Obamanation, Obamafication, Obamacare, Obamalicious, Obamaland … We say Obamanough already.