Wordsmith: Words that Should be Banned in 2012
I was tickled when I found this list of 12 words that should be banned in 2012 on PRDaily.com. What started in 1975 as a publicity ploy at Lake Superior State University in Michigan has turned into a phenomenon.
The List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness gets submissions from around the world. The word with the most nominations this year? AMAZING. It’s the first time the word has made the list.
Here’s a list of all 12 words (some of them are more than one word phrases) that made this year’s list, in order of the number of submissions they received:
- Amazing
- Baby bump
- Shared sacrifice
- Occupy
- Blowback
- Man cave
- The new normal
- Pet parents
- Win the future
- Trickeration
- Ginormous
- Thank you in advance
While I have never heard of some of these—Trickeration and Win the future—some of them hit uncomfortably close to home, like Man cave and Ginormous.
Wondering what was on the 2011 list? Yeah, me too. Here they are:
- Viral
- Epic
- Fail
- Wow factor
- A-ha moment
- Back story
- BFF
- Man up
- Refudiate
- Mama grizzlies
- The American people
- I’m just sayin’
- Facebook/Google as verbs
- Live life to the fullest
I decided to take a look back in time to the 1990s to see a list of banished words for this decade. Here are some of my favorites:
- All except
- Best Kept Secret
- Climb Down
- Exact Same
- Large size petites
- Minor emergency clinic
- The more you buy the more you save
- Vis-à-vis
- Yo
As freelance writers know, no cliché is a good cliché. And these seem to be lists of clichés made popular each year. When I can’t come up with a good alternative word, I turn to my trusty thesaurus. I also like to look up synonyms online to give me even more ideas on how to avoid using an overused word.
I have some words on my pet peeve list I’d like to see banned. They include:
- Totally
- Obviously
- Seriously
- OMG
- LOL
What words in the English language would you like to see banned next year? I can’t promise it’ll happen—but it might be fun to complain a bit…
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Can I add one? “Exceptional”. You’ll know what I mean if you watch ANY luxury car commercial. I cringe every time I hear it.
“Come in now for this exceptional offer for well qualified buyers”
“With exceptional fuel economy, and exceptional handling…”
Your car isn’t exceptional just because you say it is pal!
/rant
I’d like to nominate the word “Branding.”
If ever there was a marketing-speak word that deserved retirement, Branding is it. Send it off to the Home for Overused Words. Now.
I have a few, plucked from many conference calls and general agency vernacular:
“Value add”
“Ask” as a noun (i.e. “The client’s *ask* is … “)
“From a ____ perspective”
I am neither a native English speaker nor do I write professionally, so please excuse me if I am making a wrong comment here
So here is my thought: I feel some of the words mentioned above don’t need to be banned. Like “occupy”, “fail”, “epic” etc.
The way some of these words are (mis)used today makes you want to ban them for life, but that is not their fault!
I am aware of the recent trend of “occupy anything” or “I ate a pizza, it was epic” or “your phone has no copy-paste, fail!”. These are all ridiculous uses of those words. But are those words themselves at fault?
Those words certainly have more appropriate usage. So why ban them just because they are used in wrong situations/manner
Althogh things like LOL & OMG are perfect candidates
Here’s my quick list:
amazing (yep, same here)
specialist
“in the cloud” (seriously?!)
“solution”
showcase
“Top 10″
must-have
and idk, spend one day on twitter, and you’ll have a full dictionary of annoying, overused words.
Misuse of the word ‘literally’, as in, “those books were literally flying off the shelves.”
All, and I mean all texting acronyms: BFF, WTF, LOL, LMAO, LMFAO, FTW, w00t, IMO, IMHO, FWIW, etcetera.
Nerdisms as mentioned before like fail, epic, epic fail, awesome (either as an adjective or a noun, yeesh!), automagically, pwned.
Attaching the word ‘at’ to the word ‘where’, as in, “Hey! Where are you at?”
Using ect instead of etc, P.S.S. instead of P.P.S., ex instead of eg, unnecessarily abbreviating month names (I’ll see you on feb 10), your instead of you’re, there instead of their or they’re, k instead of OK or okay.
Sorry. I get a wee bit excited over language.
More of a phrase that I would like to see banned: Beginning a sentence with “To be honest with you…..”. Am I to assume that all other sentences from you are dishonest? I don’t know about you, but I tend to assume that when people speak, they are generally being honest. No need to preface your sentence. It is very annoying!!!!
The new use of “Really?” is also getting really annoying.
My ginormous, amazing baby bump was conceived in my husband’s man cave.
“problem” the word makes me shutter!
Seems like everything is a “problem” and or everyone is your “problem-solver”. Which goes had in hand with “solution”
ugh!
“at the end of the day, etc”
Here’s my list of words and phrases that set my teeth grinding…
Pop of color (I want to beat whoever came up with this with a tire iron)
BOGO (buy one get one)
Baby daddy (is it too much to say ‘father’ these days?)
Going/gone viral (most viruses don’t spread quickly)
I still hear ‘yummy mummy’ crop up and I just can’t bear it. I mean, c’mon people, didn’t that phrase belong to the 80s? No, I know it’s not that old really but it sounds like it should be.
And the other I can’t stand is ‘food baby’ – as in when someone has a big tummy after eating. But then, call me an old grump, I just can’t stand anyone who is skinny obsessing about *really* fat they are.
OH. And want about ‘incentivise’ and ‘guestimate’ – they surely should be banned?
Still, there are some words I’d welcome to hear more of. I keep trying to bring ‘japery’ into my conversations, as well as ‘tom foolery’ – they are brilliant. AMAZING even
While I don’t want to see the word “inform” banned from the English language, I would like to know when something other than a person could engage in informing others. In other words, I wish people would stop using “inform” to mean “influence or pervade” as in “New developments in weapons systems informed his philosophy on national defense.”
Thanks for the article, Melanie. I shared it on all my social network accounts. Useful info.
What about Facebook comments of ” cute!” or “too cute!”? Don’t these people have anything more meaningful or insightful to say? It seems that, generally speaking, Americans are getting dumber.
NINJA, I like, +1
I just have two words:
Really?
Seriously?
not sure how these two words became overused but a lot of people are saying them, and it’s not a generation thing there’s 50+ and tweens that are saying them. Ok,
These must go:
Awesome-sauce
Rockstar
Rad
And “solution” definitely needs to go. Makes everything sound like a problem.
A yeah Ryan, I forgot Rockstar!
Maybe I could add (Zen-)Master and Warrior to the list!
I second “automagically.”
I haven’t heard of that being used before. Maybe it’s because I’ve been living in a cave for the past couple of years.
1. Iconic
2. Photog
Both grating, iconic a bit more.
From looking for a job for a VERY long time, I am totally sick of the following job listing phrase: “multi-task in a fast-paced environment” – since it’s just code for “Working here will drive you insane, but we need people who are OK with that.”
HASHTAG!!!
This moronic word should definitely be on this list.
There was already a word for the symbol (#)…. it’s called a pound sign. And it’s a lot less obnoxious than “hashtag”…
Also needs to be banned: “prolly” “redonk” “cray”