Words and all that

Wow, what a turnaround time for the Urban Dictionary:

Wow, what a turnaround time for the Urban Dictionary:

OK, this is really, really nitpicky. This headline about about a southern Indiana crime caught my eye:

Good grief:

A West Point think tank has issued a paper warning America about “far right” groups such as the “anti-federalist” movement, which supports “civil activism, individual freedoms and self-government.”

The linguists at Lake Superior State University join me in distaste for the "fiscal cliff" metaphor, but not because it's innacurate or misleading (my contention). They seem to dislike it merely because it's been so overused.

"Fiscal cliff" heads the 38th annual "List of Words to be Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness" put out by Lake Superior State University in Michigan.

The Associated Press on bad-word patrol:

The Associated Press has nixed "homophobia," "ethnic cleansing," and a number of other terms from its Style Book in recent months.

This may not be WTF or even OMG, but it's certainly LOL:

By now, if lawyers haven't already taken notice, they should: Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit isn't a big fan of abbreviations, including acronyms. Today, the judge twice questioned the space-saving practice of shortening.

Listen up, fellow crimethink co-conspirators. Here's your Newspeak vocabulary lesson for the day:

What do you call a first-year student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill? If you said freshman, you’re living back in the Stone Age, when cavemen (make that cavepersons) roamed the earth.

Merriam-Webster adds 100 new words and phrases to its Collegiate Dictionary, including sexting, life coach, man cave, bucket list, and this one with a Hoosier inspiration:

Man, that's some creative teaching:

In a case of the devil you know, an Indiana high school is trying to teach students what not to say by having them write it down.

In a lesson on cursing, students at the Thomas Carr Howe High School in Indianapolis were asked to spell out the curse words they know.