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 2017 (and forty-sec­ond annu­al) edi­tion, for your read­ing enjoy­ment on this New Year’s Eve:

YOU, SIR - Hails from a more civ­i­lized era when duels were the like­ly out­come of dis­agree­ments. Today, we suf­fer on-line trolls and Inter­net shaming.

FOCUS — Good word, but overused when con­cen­trate or look at would work fine. See 1983’s ban­ish­ment of, We Must Focus Our Atten­tion.

Bête NOIRE — After con­sult­ing a list­ing of syn­onyms, we gath­er this to be a bug­bear, pet peeve, bug-boo, pain, or pest to our nominators.

TOWN HALL MEETING — Can­di­dates sel­dom debate in town halls any­more. Needs to be shown the door along with “soc­cer mom(s)” and “Joe Six­pack” (banned in 1997).

POST-TRUTH — To para­phrase the late Sen­a­tor Daniel Patrick Moyni­han, we are enti­tled to our own opin­ions but not to our own facts.

GUESSTIMATE — When guess and esti­mate are nev­er enough.

831 — A tex­ting encryp­tion of, I love you: 8 let­ters, 3 words, 1 mean­ing. Nev­er encrypt or abbre­vi­ate one’s love.

HISTORIC — Thrown around far too much. What’s con­sid­ered as such is best left to his­to­ri­ans rather than the con­tem­po­rary media.

MANICURED — As in a man­i­cured lawn. Golf greens are the clos­est grass comes to being manicured.

ECHO CHAMBER — Lath­er, rinse, and repeat. After a while, every­thing sounds the same.

ON FLEEK — Any­thing that is on-point, per­fect­ly exe­cut­ed, or look­ing good. Needs to return to its gen­e­sis: per­fect­ly groomed eyebrows.

BIGLY — Did the can­di­date say “big league” or utter this 19th-Cen­tu­ry word that means, in a swelling blus­ter­ing man­ner? Who cares? Kick it out of the echo chamber!

GHOST — To abrupt­ly end com­mu­ni­ca­tion, espe­cial­ly on social media. Is it rejec­tion angst, or is this word real­ly as overused as word-ban­ish­ment nom­i­na­tors con­tend? Either way, our com­mit­tee feels the pain.

DADBOD — The flab­by oppo­site of a chis­eled-body male ide­al. Should not empow­er dads to pur­sue a seden­tary lifestyle.

LISTICLE — Num­bered or bul­let­ed list cre­at­ed pri­mar­i­ly to gen­er­ate views on the Web, LSSU’s word-ban­ish­ment list excluded.

“GET YOUR DANDRUFF UP” — The Com­mit­tee is not sure why this mala­prop­ism got nom­i­na­tors’ dan­der up in 2016.

SELFIE DRONE — In what could be an omi­nous devel­op­ment, the self­ie — an irri­tat­ing habit of con­stant­ly pho­tograph­ing and post­ing one­self to social media — is being hand­ed off to a fly­ing cam­era. How can this end badly?

FRANKENFRUIT — Anoth­er food group co-opt­ed by “franken­food.” Not to be con­fused with oth­er forms of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied language.

DISRUPTION — Nom­i­na­tors are exhaust­ed from 2016’s dis­rup­tion. When human­i­ty looks back on zom­bie buzz­words, they will see dis­rup­tion bump­ing into oth­er overused syn­onyms for change.

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

We were among those who nom­i­nat­ed dis­rup­tion, bigly, and echo cham­ber, and are very pleased to see them includ­ed by LSSU fo 2017. Thanks, selec­tion committee!

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:

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN/MAGA — This obnox­ious slo­gan of Don­ald Trump’s misog­y­nis­tic, xeno­pho­bic 2016 cam­paign topped our list of phras­es most deserv­ing of ban­ish­ment for 2017. It implies that the Unit­ed States was at one point a great coun­try, but isn’t any longer. If Amer­i­ca is not a great coun­try now, then when was it? In the 1950s, when black peo­ple were being oppressed by Jim Crow and not many work­places were wel­com­ing of women? Or in the 1890s, the height of the Gild­ed Age, when a few Amer­i­cans were get­ting filthy rich at the expense of every­one else? The fact is, we can­not return to the past, and we should­n’t want to. As pro­gres­sives, we don’t want to take Amer­i­ca back. We want to take it for­ward. Begone, MAGA!

ALT-RIGHT — Remem­ber how apol­o­gists for the Bush admin­is­tra­tion tried to intro­duce the term enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques a few years ago? It was their way of avoid­ing say­ing the word tor­ture. Alt-right is a term sim­i­lar­ly unde­serv­ing of inclu­sion in our lex­i­con. Let’s just call these peo­ple what they real­ly are: white supremacists.

THAT BEING SAID — Unnec­es­sary filler. This cousin of Hav­ing said that and That said (ban­ished by LSSU in 2003) has become overused in writ­ing, often appear­ing as a tran­si­tion. It’s time to give it a rest.

____ PORN — As in cloud porn, cab­in porn, food porn, geek porn, and so on… which each hap­pen to be named dis­cus­sion boards on Red­dit’s para­dox­i­cal­ly and inap­pro­pri­ate­ly named Safe for Work Porn Net­work. Giv­en that porn is a term that means sex­u­al­ly explic­it con­tent, why would any­one want to label their col­lec­tion of archi­tec­ture pho­tos archi­tec­ture porn? Or their col­lec­tion of wildlife videos ani­mal porn? Or — worst of all — a col­lec­tion of inter­est­ing por­traits of human beings human porn? Do a search for any word in front of porn in any search engine, and the results will always include links to sex­u­al­ly explic­it con­tent, because that is what porn is com­mon­ly under­stood to be. Porn is sim­ply not an appro­pri­ate descrip­tor for any­thing else.

SOFT TARGET — Often heard being uttered on tele­vi­sion news fol­low­ing ter­ror­ist attacks, this is a catch-all phrase for gath­er­ing places and build­ings that are hard to pro­tect from the likes of mass shoot­ers.  In a mil­i­tary con­text, the soft target/hard tar­get dichoto­my may make sense. But this phrase does­n’t belong in the civil­ian world, because every place and set­ting in a free soci­ety such as ours is arguably a “soft tar­get”. Let’s ban­ish this phrase from civil­ian use. If ser­vice­mem­bers have a use for it while per­form­ing their jobs, that’s per­fect­ly fine.

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!