2008 Banned Words
 

The whole list

Lake Superior State University 2008 List of Banished Words
Add your comments to the 2008 list


***This year, in a gesture of humanitarian relief, the committee restores "truthiness," banned on last year's list, to formal use. This comes after comedians and late-night hosts were thrown under the bus and rendered speechless by a nationwide professional writers' strike. The silence is deafening.***

PERFECT STORM – "Overused by the pundits on evening TV shows to mean just about any coincidence." – Lynn Allen, Warren, Michigan.

"I read that 'Ontario is a perfect storm,' in reference to a report on pollution levels in the Great Lakes. Ontario is the name of one of the lakes and a Canadian province. This guy would have me believe it's a hurricane. It's time for 'perfect storm' to get rained out." – Bob Smith, DeWitt, Michigan.

"Hands off book titles as cheap descriptors!" – David Hollis, Hamilton, New York.

WEBINAR – A seminar on the web about any number of topics.
"Ouch! It hurts my brain. It should be crushed immediately before it spreads." – Carol, Lams, Michigan.

"Yet another non-word trying to worm its way into the English language due to the Internet. It belongs in the same school of non-thought that brought us e-anything and i-anything." – Scott Lassiter, Houston, Texas.

WATERBOARDING – "Let's banish 'waterboarding' to the beach, where it belongs with boogie boards and surfboards." – Patrick K. Egan, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

ORGANIC – Overused and misused to describe not only food, but computer products or human behavior, and often used when describing something as "natural," says Crystal Giordano of Brooklyn, New York. Another advertising gimmick to make things sound better than they really are, according to Rick DeVan of Willoughby, Ohio, who said he has heard claims such as "My business is organic," and computers having "organic software."

"Things have gone too far when they begin marketing T-shirts as organic." – Michelle Fitzpatrick, St. Petersburg, Florida.

"'Organic' is used to describe everything, from shampoo to meat. Banishment! Improperly used!" – Susan Clark, Bristol, Maine.

"The possibility of a food item being inorganic, i.e., not being composed of carbon atoms, is nil." – John Gomila, New Orleans, Louisiana.

"You see the word 'organic' written on everything from cereal to dog food." – Michael, Sacramento, California.

"I'm tired of health food stores selling products that they say are organic. All the food we eat is organic!" – Chad Jacobson, Park Falls, Wisconsin.

WORDSMITH/WORDSMITHING – "I've never read anything created by a wordsmith - or via wordsmithing - that was pleasant to read." – Emily Kissane, St. Paul, Minnesota.

AUTHOR/AUTHORED – "In one of former TV commentator Edwin Newman's books, he wonders if it would be correct to say that someone 'paintered' a picture?" – Dorothy Betzweiser, Cincinnati, Ohio.

POST 9/11 – "'Our post-9/11 world,' is used now, and probably used more, than AD, BC, or Y2K, time references. You'd think the United States didn't have jet fighters, nuclear bombs, and secret agents, let alone electricity, 'pre-9/11.'" – Chazz Miner, Midland, Michigan.

SURGE – "'Surge' has become a reference to a military build-up. Give me the old days, when it referenced storms and electrical power." – Michael F. Raczko, Swanton, Ohio.

"Do I even have to say it? I can't be the first one to nominate it…put me in line. From Iraq to Wall Street to the weather forecast – 'surge' really ought to recede." – Mike Lara, Colorado.

"This word came out in the context of increasing the number of troops in Iraq. Can be used to explain the expansion of many things (I have a surge in my waist) and it's use will grow out of control…The new Chevy Surge, just experience the roominess!" – Eric McMillan, Mentor, Ohio.

GIVE BACK – "This oleaginous phrase is an emergency submission to the 2008 list. The notion has arisen that as one's life progresses, one accumulates a sort of deficit balance with society which must be neutralized by charitable works or financial outlays. Are one's daily transactions throughout life a form of theft?" – Richard Ong, Carthage, Missouri.

"Various media have been featuring a large number of people who 'just want to give back.' Give back to whom? For what?" – Curtis Cooper, Hazel Park, Michigan.

'BLANK' is the new 'BLANK' or 'X' is the new 'Y' – In spite of statements to the contrary, 'Cold is (NOT) the new hot,' nor is '70 the new 50.' The idea behind such comparisons was originally good, but we've all watched them spiral out of reasonable uses into ludicrous ones and it's now time to banish them from use. Or, to phrase it another way, 'Originally clever advertising is now the new absurdity!'" – Lawrence Mickel, Coventry, Connecticut.

"Believed to have come into use in the 1960s, but it is getting tired. The comparisons have become absurd." – Geoff Steinhart, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.

"'Orange is the new black.' '50 is the new 30.' 'Chocolate is the new sex.' 'Sex is the new chocolate.' 'Fallacy is the new truth.' – Patrick Dillon, East Lansing, Michigan.

BLACK FRIDAY – "The day after Thanksgiving that retailers use to keep themselves out of the 'red' for the year. (And then followed by "Cyber-Monday.") This is counter to the start of the Great Depression's use of the term 'Black Tuesday,' which signaled the crash of the stock market that sent the economy into a tailspin. – Carl Marschner, Melvindale, Michigan.

BACK IN THE DAY – "Back in the day, we used 'back-in-the-day' to mean something really historical. Now you hear ridiculous statements such as 'Back in the day, people used Blackberries without Blue Tooth.'" – Liz Jameson, Tallahassee, Florida.

"This one might've already made the list back in the day, which was a Wednesday, I think." – Tim Bradley, Los Angeles, California.

.

RANDOM – Popular with teenagers in many places.
"Over-used and usually out of context, i.e. 'You are so random!' Really? Random is supposed to mean 'by chance.' So what I said was by chance, and not by choice?" – Gabriel Brandel, Farmington Hills, Michigan.

"Outrageous mis- and overuse, mostly by teenagers, i.e. 'This random guy, singing this random song…It was so random.' Grrrrr." – Leigh, Duncan, Galway, Ireland.

"Overuse on a massive scale by my fellow youth. Every event, activity and person can be 'sooo random' as of late. Banish it before I go vigilante." – Ben Martin, Adelaide, South Australia.

"How can a person be random?" – Emma Halpin, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom.

SWEET – "Too many sweets will make you sick. It became popular with the advent of the television show 'South Park' and by rights should have died of natural causes, but the term continues to cling to life. It is annoying when young children use it and have no idea why, but it really sounds stupid coming from the mouths of adults. Please kill this particular use of an otherwise fine word." – Wayne Braver, Manistique, Michigan

"Youth lingo overuse, similar to 'awesome.' I became sick of this one immediately." – Gordon Johnson, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

DECIMATE – Word-watchers have been calling for the annihilation of this one for several years.

"Used today in reference to widespread destruction or devastation. If you will not banish this word, I ask that its use be 'decimated' (reduced by one-tenth)." – Allan Dregseth, Fargo, North Dakota.

"I nominate 'decimate' as it applies to Man's and Nature's destructive fury and the outcome of sporting contests. Decimate simply means a 10% reduction – no more, no less. It may have derived notoriety because the ancient Romans used decimation as a technique for prisoner of war population reduction or an incentive for under-performing battle units. A group of 10 would be assembled and lots drawn. The nine losers would win and the winner would die at the hands of the losers – a variation on the instant lottery game. Perhaps 'creamed' or 'emulsified' should be substituted. – Mark Dobias, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.

"The word is so overused and misused, people use it when they should be saying 'annihilate.' It's so bad that now there are two definitions, the real one and the one that has taken over like a weed. – Dane, Flowery Branch, Georgia.

"'Decimate' has been turned upside down. It means 'to destroy one tenth,' but people are using it to mean 'to destroy nine tenths.' – David Welch, Venice, Florida.

EMOTIONAL – "Reporters, short on vocabulary, often describe a scene as 'emotional.' Well sure, but which emotion? For a radio reporter to gravely announce, 'There was an emotional send off to Joe Blow' tells me nothing, other than the reporter perceived that the participants acted in an emotional way. For instance: I had an emotional day today. I started out feeling tired and a bit grumpy until I had my coffee. I was distraught over a cat killing a bird on the other side of the street. I was bemused by my reaction to the way nature works. I was intrigued this evening to add a word or two to your suggestions. I was happy to see the words that others had posted. Gosh, this has been an emotional day for me." – Brendan Kennedy, Quesnel, British Columbia, Canada.

POP – "On every single one of the 45,000 decorating shows on cable TV (of which I watch many) there is at LEAST one obligatory use of a phrase such as ... 'the addition of the red really makes it POP.' You know when it's coming ... you mouth it along with the decorator. There must be some other way of describing the addition of an interesting detail." – Barbara, Arlington, Texas.

IT IS WHAT IT IS – "This pointless phrase, uttered initially by athletes on the losing side of a contest, is making its way into general use. It accomplishes the dual feat of adding nothing to the conversation while also being phonetically and thematically redundant." – Jeffrey Skrenes, St. Paul, Minnesota.

"It means absolutely nothing and is mostly a cop out or a way to avoid answering a question in a way that might require genuine thought or insight. Listen to an interview with some coach or athlete in big-time sports and you'll inevitably hear it." – Doug Compo, Brimley, Michigan.

"It seems to be everywhere and pervade every section of any newspaper I read. It reminds me of 'Who is John Galt?' from 'Atlas Shrugged.' It implies an acceptance of the status quo regardless of the circumstances. But it is what it is." – Erik Pauna, Mondovi, Wisconsin.

"Only Yogi Berra should be allowed to utter such a circumlocution." – Jerry Holloway, Belcamp, Maryland.

"This is migrating from primetime 'reality television' and embedding itself into otherwise articulate persons' vocabularies. Of course it is what it is...Otherwise, it wouldn't be what it would have been!" – Steve Olsen, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada.

UNDER THE BUS – "For overuse. I frequently hear this in the cliché-filled sports world, where it's used to describe misplaced blame – i.e. 'After Sunday's loss, the fans threw T.O. under the bus." – Mark R. Hinkston, Racine, Wisconsin.

"Please, just 'blame' them." – Mike Lekan, Kettering, Ohio.

"Just wondering when someone saying something negative became the same as a mob hit. Since every sportscaster in the US uses it, is a call for the media to start issuing a thesaurus to everyone in front of a camera." – Mark Bockhaus, Appleton, Wisconsin

Undocumented aliens.

:lol2: @ bruce

directly traceable to top management and
big dic ....

Shrub, mental midget, patently obvious...

:lurker:

:joint:

Heard about it, ignoring it. I'm trusting my own ability to avoid the trite.

shrub? What's wrong with shrub. Ya got a thing against bushes?

:D

Ni!

That's only 19. Where's the other 1989?

Can we ban "like"? and maybe even "totally"?

'cause that's like totally the bane of like well my life and other like stuff.

VISITATION
As in "suspended the troubled pop star's visitation rights."
What's wrong with "visiting"?

Have I ranted recently about the use of "IMPACT" by lazy journalists who cant be bothered to stop and think whether they mean affect or effect? Yes I think I have...

"Reference" - not a substitute for "refer to".

"compassionate conservatism" - doesn't exist.

The other 1989 words and phrases were reviewed by senior management, who cut the words from the list because they did not want to lose all the corporate doublespeak that they use when they want to keep the drones blissfully ignorant.

Reference as a verb form meaning "make/making specific reference to" has a certain officialese usefulness. File it under jargon if you must.

No conservative accepts Spexx's second proposition. His perception of the world is simply overly narrow, and he choked it down until it was that way.

UG, admit it - even you have no idea what you type sometimes. you put a bunch of words that sound neat together, throw in a little punctuation for good measure and then "post it" for all eternity.

To whom it may concern: TAUNT is not the same thing as TAUT. Thank you for your time.

My momma taut me to stay away from bad people like you.

Scatologically speaking that is...LOL

Taint? hehehe

It's only a matter of time before someone shoves a flute in their pussy.
This is, afterall, BANNED camp. lol!!!

Is that referring to the verb form of 'reference' or to the stuff about compassionate conservatives?

In English, a verb cannot modify a noun, as far as I can remember.

Isn't it common for the present continuous form of a noun to be used as an adjective? The Running Man? A weeping willow? The swinging sixties?

Or if you don't like that reading, consider treating "visiting rights" as a phrasal noun.

"Visit rights" would be a case of a verb modifying a noun. And it would be horrible. :p

I just dislike writers using a big word when a diminutive one will do. Actually, to me, "visitation" has connotations of spirits/ghosts/gods etc appearing.

Stupid. You can't compare words like that. An apt comparison would be to TUTOR/TUTORED.

"He authored many books" and "He tutored many students" are both perfectly acceptable sentences.


To whom? Others. That's who.

It's a useful idiom. It's a bit cliche, but I think the dangling preposition is what bugs prescriptivists.

These are lovingly referred to as snowclones. They are actually kind of neat if you put some time into studying them.

Did anyone ever use this phrase without a liberal coating of irony? Maybe it's a generational gap...

p.s. I hate these lists.

Or lawyers?

Any native speaker would understand what you were talking about if you said "visiting rights," but I think most would be uncomfortable with it. It doesn't sound natural, like it lies somewhere between "visit rights" and "visitation rights" in it's correctness.

'Running man', 'weeping willow' and 'swinging sixties' would be compound nouns, right?

'The running man' might break down thus (sorry, don't know how to subscript):
((THE)det. (((RUNNING)v)vp ((MAN)n)np)np)np[.subj]

One of the techniques they taught us in my linguistics classes was to use substitution. If you can substitute one word for another without changing the structure of the sentence, then it's likely serving the same functions.

Take your example: "[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's visitation rights" and substitute 'running.' It works fine, both mean the pop star's right to do something has been suspended. Try to substitute 'visitation' into 'the running man.' I'm not sure about "the visitation man."

Okay. That's not every enlightening. Maybe paraphrasing will help.

"The running man" == "The man that is running"
"The visitation man" == "The man that visits"
"The visiting man" == "The man that is visiting"

"[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's visitation rights"
== "[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's rights to visit [something]"

"[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's visiting rights"
== "[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's rights to visit [something]"

"[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's running rights"
== "[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's rights to run"

Yes, I've officially confused the shit out of myself. There's something going on here that my sleep-deprived brain can't pinpoint...

The phrase 'visiting rights' was used during the process of sorting out my ex's access to our kids. Maybe visitation is more American?

A couple of different dictionaries seem to imply that "visiting" is of an indeterminate length of time, while "visitation" is a single instance of a visit. A "visiting professor," for example, comes for a couple of years, and then leaves, rather than coming back and forth on a regular basis.

But etymology of it notwithstanding, "visitation" is the official legal term in all American custody cases and is almost never used in any other context.

How can anyone, in this country, not know what visitation means when it's on the news forty times a day?

Is it 'visiting times' or 'visitation times' at a hospital? Is 'visitation' mainly used in the legal context (except when referring to 'a visitation') ?

I'm pretty sure we all know what it means. I'm just trying to figure out why 'visiting rights' sounds wrong to me. Style? Accustomed usage? Is it actually ungrammatical in my dialect of English?

I think it's probably the very reason you cite: visitation rights is pretty ubiquitous in the States.

OK, to add to banned words:

Using "that" instead of "who." For example "People who love spaghetti will love this new restaurant" rather than "people that love spaghetti will love this new restaurant."

For some reason, in the past year or so, using "that" when "who" is more appropriate is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

So now we have language police, LOL

So now we have idiots, LOL.

Hey numnuts, the thread calls for adding to the list of words you want to see "banned" in 2008. Banned in context, because you know we'll need words like 'surge' for use in, say, electrical discussions.

:lol:

LOL











LOL

Simply because 'visiting rights' is not what you're use to hearing on the news 40 times a day. There are a lot of correct English words that sound strange because they are seldom used. See any UG post.

"robsterman1"

:smack:

sorry - I couldn't resist.

Thou art grated dispensation for the sin of, stating the obvious.

You mean I have an incredible perception of the obvious?

Actually I menat to type in "Aretha's Doctor", but Freud convinced me otherwise ;)

Possibly prophetic powers of prognostication, or possibly perception of the peoples pulse.

So let me get this straight - it's supposed to be "visiting rights", except on Halloween when it becomes "visitation rights"?

well, I was thinking more in terms of seances and genuine hauntings*, rather than the annual legalized extortion of harmful junkfood...

*If there are genuine hauntings, that is.


P.S. Classicman post #38: bahahahahahaha! :notworthy: Classic, man!

FUELING

This one has been building for a while, TV reporters using fueling when it isn't appropriate. Recent examples:
* "The fire was fueled by strong winds".
No, it was fueled by all the dead wood and grass lying about. The winds were fanning, driving, or maybe even powering it.
* "A massive overflow from the dam is fueling the flood".
Great! Now water is a fuel source! Screw you, OPEC, screeeewwwww yyyooouuuuuu!!!!!
* "The stock market rose, fueled by bargain hunting."

There is a fuzzy line between being appropriately precise and being an anally retentive jerk. I believe it is context-dependent; in ordinary conversation these would be alright, but as the scripted utterances of professionals, I don't think they belong.

"lock and load"

Is that a suggestion for me? Hmmmm, might give it a try one day....

Cheney said what?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these steps out of sequence for many firearms?

"Load and lock" was a military command in the United States. Originally, this order referred to the operation of the M1 Garand rifle. The phrase describes the insertion of a clip of ammunition into the rifle, loading the clip, and locking the bolt forward (which forces a round into the chamber, readying the rifle for use).

"Lock and load" has a more general meaning now, warning people to get ready for action. It was immortalized by John Wayne in 1949's Sands of Iwo Jima, where the Duke used this reversed phrase both in combat and as a humorous metaphor for becoming intoxicated.

One can also understand "lock and load" as a meaningful instruction with the M1, as described in the manual: before loading the clip, the proper procedure is to lock back the bolt using the operating rod. Note that on page 21 of the below referenced manual the procedure for preparing the M1 Garand for firing is to "pull the operating rod handle to the rear until the bolt is securely LOCKED open". To load the clip without first locking the bolt could result in the bolt inadvertently expending a round, which could be lethal. Then you load the clip. This indicates that first lock and then load is indeed the order of inserting a cartridge clip into the M1.

Wiki.