"This year, in a gesture of humanitarian relief, the (Lake Superior State University Banished Words) 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."Of course, "
(thrown) under the bus"* is on this year's Banished List, along with "
perfect storm", "
webinar"*, "
waterboarding", "
post-9/11", "
wordsmith", "
back in the day", "
surge", "
x is the new y", "
give back" and other seemingly "
random" words and phrases.
*One of the requirements for a Banished Word or Phrase is that it has been used as a title for a Blogspot or Typepad blog. [more inside]
posted by wendell
on Jan 1, 2008 -
102 comments
Truthiness Makes the Trifecta! As I predicted, the
Classic Colbertism that won two Word of the Year awards has made it onto the
32nd L.S.S.U. List of Words and Phrases Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.
Other linguistic losers for 2007:
"Awesome",
"Gitmo",
"chipotle",
"undocumented alien*",
"pwn",
"search**" (effectively replaced by Google),
"gone missing",
"gone bad" (applied to things already bad, i.e. 'drug deal gone bad'),
"ask your doctor***",
"now playing in
theaters" (Dept. of Redundancy Dept.) and
"healthy food" (
healthful is healthier), as well as shorthand couple names like
"TomKat" (Would Bogart and Bacall have been
"BogCall"?),
"i-anything" (lucky for Apple they didn't get that 'iPhone' trademark), men saying "
we're pregnant" and
"boasts", as in 'boasts
amenities'. (
Previously)
posted by wendell
on Dec 31, 2006 -
65 comments
