Banished Words for 2014

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 2014 (and thir­ty-ninth annu­al) edi­tion, for your read­ing enjoyment:

SELFIE — Has the hon­or of receiv­ing the most nom­i­na­tions this year.

“Peo­ple have tak­en pic­tures of them­selves for almost as long as George East­man’s com­pa­ny made film and cam­eras. Sud­den­ly, with the advent of smart­phones, snap­ping a ‘pic’ of one’s own image has acquired a vast­ly overused term that seems to pop up on almost every form of social media avail­able to us….A self-snapped pic­ture need not have a name all its own beyond ‘pho­to­graph.’ It may only be a mat­ter of time before pho­tos of one’s self and a friend will become ‘dualies.’ LSSU has an almost self-imposed duty to car­ry out this ban­ish­ment now.” – Lawrence, Coven­try, Conn. and Ryan, North Andover, Mass.

“Named ‘Word of the Year’ by Oxford Dic­tio­nary? Give me a break! Ugh, get rid of it.” – Bruce, Ottawa, Ont.

“Myselfie dis­par­ages the word because it’s too self­ie-serv­ing. But enough about me, how about your­selfie?” – Lisa, New York, NY

“It’s a lame word. It’s all about me, me, me. Put the smart­phone away. Nobody cares about you.” — David, Lake Mills, Wisc.

Day­na of Rochester Hills, Mich., laments how many peo­ple observe “Self­ie Sun­day” in social media, and Josh of Tuc­son, Ariz., asks, “Why can’t we have more selflessies?”

TWERK / TWERKING — Anoth­er word that made the Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies Online this year.

Cas­sidy of Man­heim, Penn. said, “All evi­dence of Miley Cyrus’ VMA per­for­mance must be delet­ed,” but it seems that many had just as much fun as Miley did on stage when they sub­mit­ted their nominations.

“Let’s just keep with ‘shake yer booty’ — no need to ‘twerk’ it! Hi ho, hi ho, it’s away with twerk we must go.” – Michael, Haslett, Mich.

Bob of Tempe, Ariz. says he responds, “T’w­erk,” when asked where he is head­ed on Mon­day mornings.

“I twitch when I hear twerk, for to twerk proves one is a jerk — or is at least twitch­ing like a jerk. Twerk­ing has brought us to a new low in our lex­i­con.” – Lisa, New York, NY

“Time to dance this one off the stage.” – Jim, Flagstaff, Ariz.

“The fastest over-used word of the 21st cen­tu­ry.” – Sean, New Lon­don, NH.

“The newest dic­tio­nary entry should leave just as quick­ly.” – Bruce, Edmon­ton, Alb.

HASHTAG — We used to call it the pound sym­bol. Now it is seep­ing from the Twit­ter­sphere into every­day expres­sion. Near­ly all who nom­i­nat­ed it found a way to use it in their entries, so we won­der if they’re real­ly will­ing to let go. #good­luck­with­that

“A tech­ni­cal term for a use­ful means of cat­e­go­riz­ing con­tent in social media, the word is abused as an inter­jec­tion in ver­bal con­ver­sa­tion and adver­tis­ing. #annoy­ing!” – Bob, Grand Rapids, Mich.

“Typed on sites that use them, that’s one thing. When ver­bal­ly spo­ken, hash­tag-itget­sol­dquick­ly. So, hash­tag-knock­itoff.” – Kuah­mel, Gar­de­na, Calif.

“Used when talk­ing about Twit­ter, but every­one seems to add it to every­day vocab­u­lary. #annoy­ing #stopthat #hash­tag #hash­tag #hash­tag .” – Alex, Rochester, Mich.

“It’s #obnox­ious #ridicu­lous #annoy­ing and I wish it would dis­ap­pear.” – Jen, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.

“#sick­ofthe­word” – Bri­an, Toron­to, Ont.

TWITTERSPHERE — To which we advise, keep all future nom­i­na­tions to few­er than 140 characters.

“There can­not pos­si­bly be any oxy­gen there.” – Matt of Tole­do, Ohio

MISTER MOM — The 30-year anniver­sary of this hilar­i­ous 1983 Michael Keaton movie seems to have released some pent-up emo­tions. It received near­ly as many nom­i­na­tions as “self­ie” and “twerk” from coast to coast in the U.S. and Cana­da, most­ly from men.

“It was a fun­ny movie in its time, but the phrase should refer only to the film, not to men in the real world. It is an insult to the mil­lions of dads who are the pri­ma­ry care­givers for their chil­dren. Would we tol­er­ate call­ing work­ing women Mrs. Dad?” says Pat, of Chica­go, who sug­gests we peruse the web­site captaindad.org, the man­ly blog of stay-at-home parenting.

“I am a stay-at-home dad/parent. And if you call me ‘Mr. Mom,’ I will punch you in the throat. – Zachary, East Prov­i­dence, RI.

“Soci­ety is chang­ing and no longer is it odd for a man to take care of his chil­dren. Even the Wall Street Jour­nal has declared, “Mr. Mom is dead” (Jan. 22, 2013). I think it is time to ban­ish it.” – Chad, St. Peters, Mo.

T‑BONE — This com­mon way of describ­ing an auto­mo­bile col­li­sion has now made it from con­ver­sa­tion into the news reports. While the acci­den­t’s lay­out does, indeed, resem­ble its name­sake cut of beef, we’d pre­fer to dis­pense with the col­lat­er­al imagery and enjoy a great steak.

“As in ‘crashed into anoth­er car per­pen­dic­u­lar­ly.’ Mak­ing a verb out of a cut of beef?” – Kyle, White Lake, Mich.

_______ ON STEROIDS — New! Improved! Steroidal!

“Please, does the ser­vice at my favorite restau­rant have to be ‘on steroids’ (even though the meat may be)?” – Bet­sy, Los Ange­les, Calif.

Suffering suffixes

Many in adver­tis­ing and in the news took two words – Armaged­don and Apoc­a­lypse – and short­ened them into two worn-out suf­fix­es this year.

–AGEDDON
–POCALYPSE

“Come on down, we’re havin’ car-aged­don, wine-aged­don, bud­get-aged­don, a sale-aged­don, flower-aged­don, and so-on-and-so-forth-aged­don! None of these appear in the Book of Rev­e­la­tions.” – Michael, Haslett, Mich.

“Every pass­ing storm or event is tagged as ice-aged­don or snow-poca­lypse. There’s a lim­it­ed sup­ply of …aged­dons and …poca­lypses; I believe it’s one, each. When run­ning out of cashews becomes nut-aged­don, it’s time to re-eval­u­ate your metaphors.” – Rob, Sell­ersville, Penn.

Politics

Politi­cians nev­er fail to dis­ap­point in pro­vid­ing fod­der for the list.

INTELLECTUALLY / MORALLY BANKRUPT — Used by mem­bers of each polit­i­cal par­ty when describ­ing mem­bers of the other.

Cal of Cher­ry Hill, NJ won­ders, “Are there intel­lec­tu­al creditors?”

OBAMACARE — A wan­der­ing pre­fix (see 2010’s “Oba­ma-”) final­ly set­tles down. We thought it might rival “fis­cal cliff,” the most-nom­i­nat­ed phrase on the 2013 list, but it did­n’t come close.

“Because Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s sig­na­ture health­care law is actu­al­ly called the [Patient Pro­tec­tion and] Afford­able Care Act. The term has been clear­ly overused and overblown by the media and by mem­bers of Con­gress.” – Ben of Michigan

“What more can I say?” – Jane, McK­in­ney, Tex.

Sports

ADVERSITY — Heard often in the world of football.

“Fac­ing adver­si­ty is work­ing 50 hours a week and still strug­gling to feed your kids. Fac­ing third and fif­teen with­out your best receiv­er with tens of mil­lions in the bank, is not.” – Kyle, White Lake, Mich.

FAN BASE — Why use one word when appar­ent­ly two are twice as better?

“From the world of sports comes the lat­est exam­ple of word infla­tion. What’s wrong with the word ‘fans’?” – Paul, Can­ton, Mich.

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

This year’s list is a superb set. We nom­i­nat­ed the “-aged­don” suf­fix for ban­ish­ment a year ago, and are very pleased to see it on the list, along with “Oba­macare” and “intellectually/morally bank­rupt”. It is absolute­ly fit­ting that the list begins with “self­ie” and “twerk” — easy the most obnox­ious phras­es of the year.

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

AMAZEBALLS and BALLS TO THE WALL — Nom­i­nat­ed by read­ers of the NPI Advo­cate. Amaze­balls is the lat­est sil­ly iter­a­tion of amaz­ing (ban­ished for 2012) while balls to the wall is an expres­sion orig­i­nal­ly used by fight­er pilots that means to accel­er­ate at top speed. The “balls” refer to the knobs on the con­trol stick and the “wall” is the pan­el the knobs rest against when the throt­tle is pushed all the way for­ward. Since the phrase full throt­tle means the same thing and is more wide­ly under­stood, balls to the wall is ban­ished, except for with­in fight­er pilot cir­cles, since pilots know it’s not a bit of sex­u­al innen­do. As for amaze­balls, there’s just no good rea­son why that phrase should exist.

FOMO — Like its cousin YOLO (You Only Live Once, ban­ished by LSSU last year), this abstruse four let­ter acronym, which stands for “Fear of Miss­ing Out” is becom­ing too per­va­sive for our lik­ing, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing how it is being used. An exam­ple sen­tence on Urban Dic­tio­nary reads, “I can’t decide if I should go out tonight, but I know that if I don’t I know I’ll get chron­ic fomo.” Need we say more?

PRESH — This sad excuse for a word appar­ent­ly has mul­ti­ple mean­ings. It can be short­hand for pre­cious, or it can be a syn­onym for awe­some (ban­ished sev­er­al years ago) and cool. But as a piece of slang, what val­ue does it have? Even J.R.R. Tolkien’s Gol­lum char­ac­ter can man­age to utter all of the syl­la­bles in pre­cious, which isn’t a long word. Let’s keep pre­cious and ban­ish presh from our vocabulary.

DEBT CEILING — This phrase, one of the biggest mis­nomers in U.S. pol­i­tics today, has been wait­ing for ban­ish­ment since 2011, when Repub­li­cans man­u­fac­tured a mid­sum­mer fis­cal cri­sis. The phrase refers to the arti­fi­cial lim­it that only allows the Depart­ment of the Trea­sury to pay the nation’s bills up to a cer­tain point. The debt ceil­ing is anachro­nis­tic and unneed­ed, since Con­gress already has the pow­er of the purse. Law­mak­ers have the author­i­ty to adjust rev­enue and expen­di­tures as they see fit. These days, the debt ceil­ing serves no pur­pose except to allow irre­spon­si­ble Repub­li­cans to bring us to the brink of default. Time to get rid of it.

ENTITLEMENTS — Often used by pun­dits on cable tele­vi­sion, right wing media, and sad­ly even elect­ed Democ­rats like Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to refer to pub­lic ser­vices like Social Secu­ri­ty, Med­ic­aid, and Medicare. In real­i­ty, all of these ser­vices are forms of deferred pay that work­ers have earned through a life­time of work. The word enti­tle­ments evokes a right wing frame that obscures this truth. It needs to go.

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!