• Twitter
  • Facebook
News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

There they go again

Lake Superior State University continues to do God's work with its annual list of words so overused they should be banned forever:

A movie about a "maverick," his journey "from Wall Street to Main Street," his "desperate search" for a "monkey" and a "game-changing" revelation about his "carbon footprint" probably would make the nation's word-watchers physically ill.

Especially if it were the "winner of five nominations."

All those words and phrases are on Lake Superior State University's annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. The 34th version of the list was released Tuesday, which means, "It's that time of year again."

The school selected only 15 words, though, when the list could have been a lot bigger. What about "webinar" or "under the bus" or "hope" and "change" and, by God, don't get me started on this one, "world class"? And maybe "bailout" and "meltdown" will make next year's list.

Comments

Bob G.
Wed, 12/31/2008 - 6:45pm

Never ceases to amaze me how HACKNEYED these words become in SUCH a short time...

Funny, not one mention of "my" word:
"Environmangelist" (Al Gore)

;)

Mitch Harper
Fri, 01/02/2009 - 1:48pm

I have my own nominee for the most overused phrase in 2008. "It is what it is" should be thrown on the scapheap with yesteryear's "at the end of the day."

Leo Morris
Fri, 01/02/2009 - 1:56pm

But what if we disagree on what is is?

Quantcast