Banished Words for 2013

Edi­tor’s note: This post was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Decem­ber 30th, 2012, and repub­lished on New Year’s Day 2013.

Every year since 1976, Michigan’s Lake Supe­ri­or State Uni­ver­si­ty has released a thought­ful and humor­ous “List of Words Ban­ished from the Queen’s Eng­lish for Mis­use, Overuse and Gen­er­al Use­less­ness”. Here is the 2013 (and thir­ty-eighth annu­al) edi­tion, for your read­ing enjoyment:

FISCAL CLIFF — As one might expect, this phrase received the most nom­i­na­tions this year. If Con­gress acts to keep the coun­try from tum­bling over the cliff, LSSU believes this ban­ish­ment should get some of the credit.

“You can’t turn on the news with­out hear­ing this. I’m equal­ly wor­ried about the Riv­er of Debt and Moun­tain of Despair.“Christopher Loiselle, Mid­land, Michigan

“(We’ve) lost sight of the metaphor and start­ed to think it’s a real place, like with the head­line, ‘Oba­ma, Boehn­er meet­ing on fis­cal cliff’.” Bar­ry Cochran, Port­land, Ore.

“Tends to be used how­ev­er the speak­er wish­es to use it, as in falling off the fis­cal cliff, climb­ing the fis­cal cliff, chal­lenged by the fis­cal cliff, etc. Just once, I would like to hear it referred to as a finan­cial cri­sis.” Bar­bara Cliff, John­stown, Pennsylvania

“Con­tin­u­al­ly referred to as ‘the so-called fis­cal cliff,’ fol­lowed by a def­i­n­i­tion. How many times do we need to hear ‘fis­cal cliff,’ let alone its def­i­n­i­tion? Please let this phrase fall off of a real cliff!” Ran­dal Bak­er, Seabeck, Washington

“Fis­cal cliff, fis­cal update, fis­cal aus­ter­i­ty… what­ev­er hap­pened to ‘eco­nom­ic’ updates? Fis­cal has to go.” Dawn Far­rell-Tay­lor, Ontario

“Makes me want to throw some­one over a real cliff,” Don­na, John­stown, New York

“If only those who utter these words would take a giant leap off of it.” Joann Eschen­burg, Clin­ton Twp., Michigan

KICK THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD — “Usu­al­ly used in pol­i­tics, this typ­i­cal­ly means that some­one or some group is neglect­ing its respon­si­bil­i­ties. This was seized upon dur­ing the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion and is used as a cliché by all parties…Republicans, Democ­rats, Inde­pen­dents, Lib­er­tar­i­ans, Tories, Whigs, Social­ists, Com­mu­nists, Fash­ion­istas…” Mike Clo­ran, Cincin­nati, Ohio

“I’m sur­prised it was­n’t on your 2012 list — were you just kick­ing the, um, phrase down the road to 2013?” T. Jones, Ann Arbor, Michigan

“I thought that per­haps you weren’t ready to deal with it. You just kicked that can down the road.” Rebec­ca Martz, Hous­ton, Texas

“I would def­i­nite­ly like to kick some cans of the human vari­ety every time I hear politi­cians use this phrase to describe a cir­cum­stance that has­n’t gone their way.” Chris­tine Tomassi­ni, Livo­nia, Michigan

“Much the same as ‘put on the back burn­er,’ these two phras­es still have heat and are still in the road. Kick this lat­est phrase down the road.” Michael F. Raczko, Swan­ton, Ohio

“I can’t turn on the TV any more with­out being informed that can-kick­ing has occurred. What’s wrong with the word ‘post­pone’?” Kathryn, West Chester, Ohio

DOUBLE DOWN — “This black­jack term is now used as a verb in place of ‘repeat’ or ‘reaf­firm’ or ‘reit­er­ate.’ Yet, it adds noth­ing. It’s not even col­or­ful. Hit me!” Allan Ryan, Boston, Mass.

“The next time I see or hear the phrase, I am going to dou­ble over.” Tony Reed, Hol­land, Michigan

“Over-used with­in the last year or so in pol­i­tics.” John Gates, Cum­ber­land, Maine

“Bet­ter nip this in the bud – it’s already mor­phed into ‘quadru­ple down.’ ” Marc Pon­to, Mil­wau­kee, Wisconsin

JOB CREATORS/CREATION — “It implies super­nat­ur­al pow­ers — such as the abil­i­ty to change the weath­er or lev­i­tate. Most new jobs pay less than the lost jobs to ensure stratos­pher­ic CEO com­pen­sa­tion and nice returns on invest­ments. I respect­ful­ly pro­pose a replace­ment term that is more accu­rate — job depleters.” Mark Dobias, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

“One of the most over­played buzz terms of the 2012 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Appar­ent­ly ‘low­er­ing unem­ploy­ment’ doesn’t have the same impact.” Den­nis Ittner, Tor­rance, California

“Since jobs are only cre­at­ed by demand, con­sumers are the real job cre­ators.” Scott Big­ger­staff, Red­lands, California

“It’s been over-used and pigeon-holed into polit­i­cal argu­ments left, right, and cen­ter to the point that I don’t believe it has any real mean­ing.” Adam Myers, Cum­ming, Ga.

“To belong to this tax-proof club, you don’t have to cre­ate a sin­gle job. All you need to do is be rich. In fact, many peo­ple who call them­selves ‘job cre­ators’ make their mon­ey by lay­ing off peo­ple.” S. Lieber­man, Seat­tle, Washington

“Uttered by every politi­cian who wants to give big tax breaks to rich peo­ple and rich busi­ness­es…” Jack Kolars, North Manka­to, Minnesota

“If these guys are cap­i­tal­ists, as claimed, they are focused on reduc­ing expens­es and max­i­miz­ing prof­it. Jobs are a large part of expens­es. So, if any­thing at all, they min­i­mize employ­ment to max­i­mize prof­its. Up is down, black is white. Job cre­ators are real­ly employ­ment min­i­miz­ers.” Bob Fan­drich, Fred­er­icks­burg, Virginia

PASSION/PASSIONATE — “Dia­betes is not just Big Phar­ma’s busi­ness, it’s their pas­sion! This or that actor is pas­sion­ate! about some issue some­where. A DC lob­by­ist is pas­sion­ate! about pass­ing (or block­ing) some pro­posed law. My pas­sion! is sim­ple: Ban­ish this pho­ny-baloney word.” George Alexan­der, Stu­dio City, California

“As in ‘that’s my pas­sion.’ Please, let’s hope you mean ‘enthu­si­asm.’ ‘Pas­sion’ con­notes ‘unbri­dled,’ unmedi­at­ed by rea­son and sound judg­ment. Pas­sion is the stuff of Ahab, Hitler, and chau­vin­ists of every stripe, and ter­ror­ists.” Michael T. Smith, Salem, Oregon

“Seared tuna will taste like dust swept from a sta­tion plat­form — until it’s cooked pas­sion­ate­ly. Appar­ent­ly, it’s insuf­fi­cient to do it ably, with skill, com­mit­ment or finesse. Pas­sion­ate, begone!” Andrew Foyle, Bris­tol, Unit­ed Kingdom

“My pas­sion is (insert favorite snack food here). I’m pas­sion­ate about how much I hate the words ‘pas­sion’ and ‘pas­sion­ate.’ Don’t wait for next year’s list!” David Gre­aney, Bed­ford, New Hampshire

YOLO — “Stands for ‘You Only Live Once’ and used by wannabe Twit­ter philoso­phers who think they’ve uncov­ered a deep secret of life. Also used as an excuse to do real­ly stu­pid things, such as streak­ing at a base­ball game with YOLO print­ed on one’s chest. I only live once, so I’d pre­fer to be able to do it with­out ever see­ing YOLO again.” Bren­dan Cot­ter, Grosse Pte. Park, Michigan

“Used by teens every­where to describe an action that is risky or uncon­ven­tion­al, yet accept­able because ‘you only live once.’ Who lives more than once?” P.P., Los Ange­les, California

“Just gives peo­ple, espe­cial­ly teens, a rea­son to do stu­pid things. I find it annoy­ing and I’m pret­ty sure I’m not alone here.” Daniel, Hick­o­ry, North Carolina

“Only a real yoyo would use the term ‘yolo.’ ” San­dra McGlew, White Lake, Michigan

SPOILER ALERT — “What was once a polite warn­ing has turned into a declar­a­tive state­ment: I have just spoiled some­thing for you. When news out­lets print arti­cles with head­lines such as, ‘Huge upset in men’s Olympic swim­ming,’ with a diminu­tive ‘spoil­er alert’ on the link to the rest of the arti­cle, I think it’s safe to say we’ve for­got­ten the mean­ing of the word ‘alert.’ ” Afton, Port­land, Ore.

“Used as an obnox­ious way to show one has triv­ial infor­ma­tion and is about to use it, no mat­ter what.” Joseph Joly, Fre­mont, California

BUCKET LIST — “The expres­sion makes me cringe every time I hear it — and we’ve been hear­ing it for sev­er­al years. I’m sur­prised it isn’t already in your mas­ter list. Let’s empha­size life and what we do dur­ing it. It’s such a grim way of look­ing at ‘what I want to do,’ and often it is in self­ish terms.” Shea Hoffmitz, Hamil­ton, Ont.

“Get­ting this phrase on the Ban­ished Word List is on my buck­et list!” Fred­er­ick Fish, Georgia

TRENDING — “A trend is some­thing tem­po­rary, thank good­ness; how­ev­er, it is not a verb, and I’m tired of news sta­tions telling me what trite ‘news’ is ‘trend­ing.’ ” Kyle Melton, White Lake, Michigan

“I’m sick of chirpy enter­tain­ment com­men­ta­tors con­stant­ly inform­ing us of what ‘is trend­ing right now.’ I used to like a good trend until this.” Nan­cy, Vic­to­ria, British Columbia.

“Trend­ing leaves me won­der­ing ‘in what direc­tion?’ It seems to mean ‘increas­ing in atten­tion received’ or ‘fre­quen­cy in which it is ref­er­enced.’ ” John Han­non, Spring­field, Va.

SUPERFOOD — “It’s food. It’s either health­ful or it’s not. There is no ‘super’ involved.” Jason Hansen, Fred­er­ic, Michigan

BONELESS WINGS — “Can we just call them chick­en (pieces)?” John McNa­ma­ra, Lans­ing, Michigan

GURU — “Unless you’re teach­ing tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion, Hin­duism or Bud­dhism, please don’t call your­self a guru just because you think you’re an expert at some­thing. It’s sil­ly and pre­ten­tious. Let oth­er peo­ple call you that, if they must.” Mitch Devine, Ran­cho San­ta Mar­gari­ta, California

A Word Ban­ish­ment salute to John Prokop of Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, who sent us a list of near­ly four dozen words, phras­es and acronyms that “bug the heck” out of him. Most of those that he men­tioned are on this list or have been on pre­vi­ous lists.

Lists for pre­vi­ous years are avail­able on Lake Superior’s site.

Two of the words or phras­es on the 2013 list — job cre­ator and guru — were nom­i­nat­ed by us last year after LSSU released its list for 2012 (we always tack on a few words or phras­es of our own). Our thanks to LSSU for includ­ing these two this time around. They’ve been wor­thy of ban­ish­ment for quite some time.

This year’s list is quite strong, and we com­mend the Uni­corn Hunters for doing such a thor­ough job putting it togeth­er. “Fis­cal cliff” (which, as we’ve not­ed here on The Advo­cate, is a ter­ri­ble metaphor for our nation’s finan­cial prob­lems) deserved­ly has the top spot, and we’re also very glad to see that “YOLO” made it on.

We’d com­plete the list by adding sev­er­al more obnox­ious phras­es that we’d like to see ban­ished for overuse, mis­use and gen­er­al uselessness:

ADORKABLE: A made-up word that com­bines dorky and adork­able; its chief Urban Dic­tio­nary entry defines it as “a high­er state of being all dorks strive towards.” This mash-up has been in use for a num­ber of years now, but we heard it way too often in 2012. It needs to go.

-GEDDON con­struct: This suf­fix, derived from the word Armaged­don — which refers to a big bat­tle that will sup­pos­ed­ly take place at the end of the world — is increas­ing­ly used in man­u­fac­tured words that serve to dra­ma­tize dis­rup­tive events. “Snow­maged­don” has been used to describe major snow­storms, “Euroged­don” to describe Europe’s fis­cal prob­lems (which are appar­ent­ly worse than ours), and “Car­maged­don” to describe the effect of clos­ing Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Inter­state 405 for road work. These are all sur­viv­able events… which leads us to ask: What do high­way clo­sures, bud­get dis­putes, and weath­er sys­tems have to do with the end of the world? Let’s stop ‑ged­don in its tracks and ban­ish it.

LITERALLY: The oppo­site of fig­u­ra­tive­ly, but fre­quent­ly used when the speak­er or writer actu­al­ly means fig­u­ra­tive­ly. As with “like”, it has become a pop­u­lar filler word with young peo­ple. It is also some­times used to embell­ish a sen­tence — maybe because it packs more punch than fig­u­ra­tive­ly. For exam­ple: “Me and my friends lit­er­al­ly brought the house down with our insane­ly awe­some party!”

MOMMY PORN: A stu­pid phrase that the media invent­ed to give a name to the genre that Fifty Shades of Grey tril­o­gy and sim­i­lar works of fic­tion belong to. We hat­ed this one the moment we first heard it. It needs to be ban­ished now before it sees wider usage.

SUPERSTORM: What Sandy sup­pos­ed­ly turned into after it ceased to be a hur­ri­cane. After Kat­ri­na, Sandy was (and still is) the sec­ond-costli­est hur­ri­cane in U.S. his­to­ry, so per­haps “Super­storm” is an appro­pri­ate descrip­tor. How­ev­er, as Pop­u­lar Sci­ence says, it is not a mete­o­ro­log­i­cal term, and seems to have caught on with head­line writ­ers because of its shock val­ue. We here­by place a one-year mora­to­ri­um on it.

MEH: A syn­onym for mediocre, fre­quent­ly seen in com­ment threads. Prob­a­bly owes its pop­u­lar­i­ty to the long-run­ning tele­vi­sion show The Simp­sons. Used to describe one’s lack of enthu­si­asm for some­thing, whether it be a can­di­dates’ debate, final score of a game, or a news event. Its overuse has become rather grat­ing. Time to ban­ish it.

What words would you like to see ban­ished that aren’t on this year’s list — or the Mas­ter List? Let us know in the com­ments. And, Hap­py New Year!