DETROIT — Drawing nominations from English enthusiasts and those just plain tired of overused expressions, Lake Superior State University’s Word Banishment Committee has issued its annual list of words and phrases it deems time to be “unfriended.”
Among them: “teachable moment,” “czar,” “shovel-ready” and combinations of words such as “sexting,” “bromance” and “chillaxin.’ ”
“Someone will say something and then everybody picks up on it, and it snowballs,” said Joellen Eschenburg, a retired government worker who said she went online earlier this year to nominate the phrase “come to the table.”
The LSSU list began as a publicity stunt on New Year’s Day 1976 and each year draws thousands of nominations from news, education, technology, advertising, politics, sports and everyday chit-chat.
Some words have been so “flat-out” (banned in 2000) annoying in “meaningful dialogue” (banned in 1976), they’ve appeared for several years on the list that is decided in late December “behind closed doors” (banned in 1994).
Last year’s list included “maverick” and “staycation.” And on this year’s list: all versions of “tweets” — “tweetaholic,” “retweet,” “twitterhea,” “twitterature” and “twittersphere.”
For nominee remarks on the list of banned words, go to www.lssu.edu/banished. Here is the full list, from the Web site, with comments by LSSU:
Shovel-ready
Transparent/transparency
Czar: Long used by the media as a metaphor for positions of high authority
Tweet: And all of its variations…tweetaholic, retweet, twitterhea, twitterature, twittersphere…
App: As in application
Sexting: As in sending sexually explicit pictures and text messages through the cell phone.
Friend as a verb: Came into popularity through social networking Web sites. You add someone to your network by “friending” them, or remove them by “unfriending” them.
Teachable moment: What might otherwise be known as “a lesson.”
In these economic times …
Stimulus
Toxic assets: We think we’re going to be sick.
Too big to fail
Bromance
Chillaxin’: Nominated for several years. We couldn’t chill about it anymore.
Obama-prefix: As in Obamanomics and Obamanation
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