Banished Words for 2016

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 2016 (and forty-first annu­al) edi­tion, for your read­ing enjoy­ment on this New Year’s Eve:

SO — So the word that received the most nom­i­na­tions this year was already ban­ished, but today it is being used dif­fer­ent­ly than it was in 1999, when nom­i­na­tors were say­ing, “I am SO down with this list!”  Nom­i­na­tions came from across the country.

“Cur­rent­ly, it is being overused as the first word in the answer to ANY ques­tion. For instance, “How did you learn to play the piano?” Answer: “So my dad was in a clas­si­cal music club…” – Bob For­rest, Tempe Ariz.

“Tune in to any news chan­nel and you’ll hear it. The word serves no pur­pose in the sen­tence and to me is like fin­ger­nails on a chalk­board. So, I sub­mit the extra, mean­ing­less, and overused word ‘so.’” – Scott Shack­le­ton, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.

“Politi­cians, espe­cial­ly, are using this word when asked a ques­tion and not answer­ing said ques­tion. It is used by all par­ties in Canada’s Fed­er­al elec­tion. – Karen New­ton, Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

“Fre­quent­ly used to begin a sen­tence, par­tic­u­lar­ly in response to a ques­tion, this tire­some and gram­mat­i­cal­ly incor­rect replace­ment for “Like,” or “Um,” is even more irksome…It hurts my ears, every sin­gle time I hear it! – Thomas H. Weiss, Mt. Pleas­ant, Mich.

“So it’s get­ting real­ly annoy­ing. So can we please put a stop to this?” – David G. Simp­son, Lau­rel, Md.

“It has become wide­spread to the point of an epi­dem­ic,” said a sick­ened John from Philadel­phia, Penn.

CONVERSATION — Online pub­li­ca­tions invite us to “join the con­ver­sa­tion,” which is usu­al­ly more of a scream-fest.  Gayle from Cedarville, Mich. won­ders if “debate has become too harsh for our del­i­cate sen­si­bil­i­ties.  Now we are all encour­aged to have a ‘con­ver­sa­tion,’ and every­thing will some­what be mag­i­cal­ly resolved.”

“Over the past five years or so, this word has been increas­ing­ly used by talk­ing heads on radio, tele­vi­sion and in polit­i­cal cir­cles to describe every form of ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion known to mankind. It has replaced ‘dis­cus­sion,’ ‘debate,’ ‘chat,’ ‘dis­course,’ ‘argu­ment,’ ‘lec­ture,’ ‘talk’….all of which can pro­vide some con­text to the nature of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Per­haps the users feel that it is a word that is least like­ly to offend peo­ple, but I con­sid­er it to be impre­cise lan­guage that, over time, dumbs down the art of effec­tive dis­course.” – Richard Fry, Marathon, Ont.

“Used by every media type with­out excep­tion. No one lis­tens.” – Richard Seitz, Charleston, Ill.

“Have one, start one, engage in one.  Enough.” – Fred Rogers, Hous­ton, Tex.

We are invit­ed to “join the con­ver­sa­tion if we want to give an opin­ion. This expres­sion is overused and it is annoy­ing. Thanks for lis­ten­ing, eh.” – Deb­bie Irwin, Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

PROBLEMATIC — “A cor­po­rate-aca­d­e­m­ic weasel word,” accord­ing to the Urban Dictionary.

“Some­where along the line, this word became a trendy replace­ment for ‘that is a prob­lem.’ I just hate it.” – Sharon Mar­tin, Hager­stown, Md.

“Any­thing that the speak­er finds vague­ly incon­ve­nient or unde­sir­able, such as an oppos­ing polit­i­cal belief or bad traf­fic. Con­trast things that are self-evi­dent­ly tak­en to be prob­lem­at­ic with, say, actu­al prob­lems like a hole in the ozone lay­er or a job loss.” – Adam Rosen, Asheville, N.C.

STAKEHOLDER — A word that has expand­ed from describ­ing some­one who may actu­al­ly have a stake in a sit­u­a­tion or prob­lem, now being over-used in busi­ness to describe cus­tomers and others.

“Often used with ‘engage­ment.’ If some­one is dis­en­gaged, they’re not real­ly a stake­hold­er in the first place. LSSU, please engage your stake­hold­ers by adding this pre­ten­tious jar­gon to your list. – Gwen­dolyn Bar­low, Port­land, Ore.

Harley Carter of Cal­gary, Alber­ta, says he has heard it with anoth­er word pop­u­lar in busi­ness-speak, “social­ize,” which means to spread an idea around to see what oth­ers think of it.  “We need to social­ize this con­cept with our ‘stake­hold­ers.’”

“Dr. Van Hels­ing should be the only stake hold­er,” says Jeff Bae­nen of Min­neapo­lis, Minn.

PRICE POINT — Anoth­er exam­ple of using two words when one will do.

“This allit­er­a­tive muta­tion seems to be replac­ing the word ‘price’ or ‘cost.’ It may be stan­dard busi­ness-speak, but must it con­t­a­m­i­nate every­day speech?” says Kevin Car­ney of Chica­go, who pro­vid­ed an exam­ple in the March 19, 2015 issue of the New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine, pg. 1171, which says, “Although the ‘price point’ of effec­tive new drugs…may ini­tial­ly be out of reach for many patients…”

“It has no ‘point.’  It is just a ‘price.’” – Guy Michael, Cher­ry Hill, N.J.

SECRET SAUCE — “Usu­al­ly used in a sen­tence explain­ing the ‘secret’ in excru­ci­at­ing pub­lic detail. Is this a metaphor for busi­ness suc­cess based on the fast food indus­try?” – John Beck­ett, Ann Arbor, Mich.

“It has become too fre­quent in busi­ness dis­cus­sions. I am tired of it.” – Bill Evans, Clin­ton, Miss.

BREAK THE INTERNET — A phrase that is annoy­ing online word-watch­ers around the world. 

“An annoy­ing bit of hyper­bole about the lat­est saucy pic­ture or con­tro­ver­sy that is already becom­ing trite.” – Tim Bed­nall, Mel­bourne, Vic­to­ria, Australia

“Mean­ing a post or video or what­ev­er will have so much Inter­net traf­fic that it will ‘break the inter­net.’ It’s being used for every head­line and video. Ridicu­lous.” – Matthew Squires, Auburn, Mich.

“I hope the list doesn’t ‘break the inter­net.’ (How else would I read it next year)?” – Dean Hin­richs, Kansas City, Mo.

WALK IT BACK — A slow­er back-pedal?

“It seems as if every politi­cian who makes a state­ment has to ‘walk it back,’ mean­ing retract the state­ment, or explain it in labo­ri­ous detail to the extent that the state­ment no longer has any valid­i­ty or mean­ing once it has been ‘walked back.’” – Max Hill, Killeen, Tex.

PRESSER — This short­ened form of “press release” and “press con­fer­ence” is not so impressive. 

“Not only is there no intel­li­gent con­nec­tion between the word “press­er” and its sup­posed mean­ing, this word already has a def­i­n­i­tion: a per­son or device that removes wrin­kles. Let’s either say ‘press con­fer­ence’ or ‘press release’ or come up with some­thing more orig­i­nal, intel­li­gent and inter­est­ing!” – Con­stance Kel­ly, West Bloom­field, Mich.

“This indus­try buzz­word has slipped into usage in news report­ing and now that they have start­ed, they can’t seem to stop using it.” – Richard W. Var­ney, Akron, Ohio.

MANSPREADING — A word that is famil­iar to those in big­ger cities, where seats on the bus or sub­way are some­times dif­fi­cult to find. 

“Men don’t need anoth­er dis­gust­ing-sound­ing word thrown into the vocab­u­lary to describe some­thing they do…You’re just tak­ing too much room on this train seat, be a lit­tle more polite…” – Car­rie Hansen, Cale­do­nia, Mich.

“The term itself is stu­pid, and the cam­paign and peti­tion writ­ten by men’s rights activists claim­ing that men need to take up more space due to their anato­my, and that anti-manspread­ing cam­paigns are ‘male-bash­ing,’ are ridicu­lous. The prob­lem is with peo­ple tak­ing up too much space on the sub­way or any pub­lic mode of trans­porta­tion. – Beth, Anchor­age, Alaska

VAPE — Vape and vap­ing are used to describe the act of ‘smok­ing’ e‑cigarettes (anoth­er strange word) since the prod­ucts emit vapor instead of smoke.

David Ervin of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., says he hopes the word “goes up in smoke.”

GIVING ME LIFE — The phrase refers to any­thing that may excite a per­son, or some­thing that caus­es one to laugh. 

“I sug­gest ban­ish­ing this hyper­bole for over-use,” says Ana Rob­bins, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.

“This list of ban­ished words is ‘giv­ing me life’!”

PHYSICALITY — We had to include one for the sports fans. John Kol­lig of Jamestown, N.Y., says this is overused by every sports broad­cast­er and writer.

“I am not sure who is respon­si­ble, but over the last 12–18 months you can­not watch a sport­ing event, lis­ten to a sports talk show on radio, or any­thing on ESPN with­out some­one using this term to attempt to describe an ath­lete or a con­test.” – Dan Beitzel, Per­rys­burg, Ohio

“Every time I hear them say it, I change the chan­nel.” – Bren­da Ruff­ing, Jack­son, Mich.

“What the heck does it mean?” – Lin­da Pardy, Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

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

Once again, LSSU has com­piled a pret­ty strong list. We’re very pleased to see phys­i­cal­i­ty includ­ed, as we nom­i­nat­ed it for ban­ish­ment here a year ago.

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

NETFLIX AND CHILL — This phrase had an innocu­ous mean­ing when it was first used on social media years ago, but it has since evolved into slang. It means hook­ing up for sex. It gained its own Urban Dic­tio­nary entry this year and has rapid­ly become tir­ing. As one Twit­ter user joked ear­li­er this year: “Y’all guys need to come up with a new mat­ing call, that let’s watch net­flix and chill isn’t slick anymore.”

EXPLOSIVE PLAY — Sports­writ­ers and sports announc­ers have fall­en in love with this phrase, espe­cial­ly this past grid­iron sea­son. Its use has become inces­sant. For instance, on Twit­ter, a cou­ple of days ago, Eliot Shorr-Parks tweet­ed: “Pat Shur­mur says the Eagles have the play­ers to make explo­sive plays. When asked who, he said all of them.” The word explo­sive is an adjec­tive that pri­mar­i­ly means “to expand with force and noise because of rapid chem­i­cal change or decom­po­si­tion”. It can also mean “to burst forth vio­lent­ly or emo­tion­al­ly”. In the con­text of Amer­i­can foot­ball, when sports­cast­ers are gush­ing about an explo­sive play, they’re usu­al­ly just prais­ing a catch or run that moved a team’s offense down­field, often close to the endzone.

CHIP IN — It seems not a day goes by when we’re not asked to “chip in” to help a can­di­date, cam­paign, or orga­ni­za­tion in an end-of-the-year/quar­ter/­month fundrais­ing email.

All too often, the pitch­es are vague, neglect­ing to men­tion how exact­ly the request­ed con­tri­bu­tions will be put to use.

For exam­ple, only yes­ter­day, MoveOn asked, “Will you chip in to pow­er MoveOn mem­bers’ orga­niz­ing in 2016? Click here if you can.” Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton urged Hillary sup­port­ers to “chip in $1 before mid­night tomor­row” to help her cam­paign. And two days before that, Orga­niz­ing For Action made a sim­i­lar request. “We’re build­ing toward mak­ing the most out of next year, so chip in $5 or more today and be part of it”, read an email from OFA’s Sara El-Amine.

The overuse of this phrase sad­ly shows no sign of abat­ing, so we say it’s time to ban­ish it. Out with chip in!

YUCCIE — A ridicu­lous, sil­ly made up term coined by David Infante that’s sup­posed to be short for “Young Urban Cre­atives”. We hat­ed it from the moment we saw it used on Mash­able, and it deserves to be ban­ished before it has a chance to catch on. It’s that awful.

ACTIVE, FLUID SITUATION — Often heard dur­ing law enforce­ment press con­fer­ences aired live on net­work or cable tele­vi­sion. This phrase has become boil­er­plate filler, used to repeat­ed­ly ward off requests for infor­ma­tion when author­i­ties have yet to fin­ish an inves­ti­ga­tion into a mass shoot­ing or anoth­er devel­op­ing threat to pub­lic safe­ty. Accord­ing to Oxford, flu­id prin­ci­pal­ly means “a sub­stance that has no fixed shape and yields eas­i­ly to exter­nal pres­sure”. When author­i­ties say a sit­u­a­tion is flu­id, what they real­ly mean is, “We don’t have every­thing under con­trol yet.” But they’d rather not say that on cam­era, it seems.

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!