SAULT STE MARIE, Mich. (WLUC) – Stop resorting to vague, mundane and meaningless words and terms! You are taking the lazy way out and only confuse matters by relying too much on inaccurate, stagnant and crazy communication!
Language monitors across the country and around the world decried the poverty and futility of basic methods of providing information in their mock-serious entries for the annual list of banished language words on Lake Superior State University’s website. LSSU announces the results of the annual summary on December 31 to start the New Year off on the right foot, er, tongue.
The vast majority of the over 1,500 nominations of words and terms for banishment for misuse, overuse and uselessness for 2023 indulged and sank into the erosion of basic expression.
Ranked #1 Best of the Worst: GOAT, acronym for Greatest of All Time. The multiple denominators didn’t have to be physicists or grammarians to determine the literal impossibility and technical vagueness of this strange superlative. However, it is given to everyone from Olympic gold medalists to Danger! champions, as one muckraker jokingly despaired. Meanwhile, other naysayers pointed to social media posts flooding a photo of, for example, multiple cricketers or football stars with a caption about a few goats in a frame.
“Words and terms matter. Or at least it should. Especially those that derive from chance or causality. This was noticed by nominators near and far, and our competition judges from the LSSU School of Arts and Letters agreed,” said Peter Szatmary, executive director of marketing and communications at Lake State.
“They really belied their disapproval of GOAT’s attempted disqualification because the supposed designation becomes an actual misnomer. The singularity of the ‘greatest of all time’ cannot happen, no way, no way. And instead of being selectively administered, it is easily given. Remember Groucho Marx’s line about not wanting to join a club that would accept him as a member?
“Nine additional words and terms were banished for 2023—from new no-nos ‘inflection point’ to no. at number 10 – also fall somewhere on the spectrum between weird and tired. They are hollow as hell or thinned out from oversaturation. Be careful—be more careful—with words and jargon.”
LSSU has compiled an annual Banned Word List since 1976, and later copyrighted the concept, to uphold, protect and support excellence in language by encouraging the avoidance of words and terms that are overworked, redundant, oxymoronic, clichéd, illogical, nonsensical – and otherwise ineffective, confusing or irritating.
Over the decades, the Lake State has received tens of thousands of nominations for the list, which now totals more than 1,000 entries. Examples of winners (or should that be losers?) to make the annual roundup: “softening,” “definitely,” “classic,” “bromance” and “COVID-19,” plus “wrap your head around,” ” friendly for users”, “at this point in time”, “not so much” and “viable alternative”. The list of banished words has become such a cultural phenomenon that comedian George Carlin came up with an entry that made the annals in 1994: “baddaboom, baddabing.”
This year, nominations came from most major US cities and many US states, plus Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, Portugal, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Netherlands, Belgium, Czech Republic, India, China, Namibia, South Africa, Nigeria, American Samoa, Malaysia, British Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago and across Canada.
Here is the list of banished words and terms for 2023 and the reasons for their banishment:
1. GOAT
The acronym for all-time greats gets the goat of searchers and judges for overuse, misuse, and futility. “Applies to everyone and everything from athletes to chicken wings,” declared one detractor. “How can anyone or anything be a goat, anyway?” Data drops; time goes on. Some sprinkle goat like table salt on “anyone who is really good.” Another wordsmith: ironically, “goat” once suggested something unsuccessful; now, the goat is an indiscriminate joke.
2. Inflection point
Mathematical term that entered everyday language and lost its original meaning. This year’s version of the pivot, kicked out in 2021. “Chronic throat clearing by historians, journalists, scientists or politicians. Its ubiquity has pushed me to a tipping point of throwing soft objects every time I hear it, “says a narrator. “The tipping point has reached saturation point and tipping point,” declared another. “Pretentious way of saying turning point.” Overuse and misuse.
3. Quitting smoking
Trendy but inaccurate. Not an employee who resigns invisibly. Instead, an employee who meets the minimum requirements for a position. Some nominating reasons: “normal job performance”, “fantastic way of saying “work to rule”, “nothing more than companies complaining about workers who refuse to be exploited”, “not a new phenomenon; it’s burning, anger, boredom, detachment.” On the precipice for next year’s banished word list, as well as constant misuse and overuse.
4. Gas lighting
Proponents aren’t crazy, arguing that overuse disconnects the term from the real concern it has identified in the past: dangerous psychological manipulation that causes victims to mistrust their thoughts, feelings, memories, or perception of reality. Others cited misuse: a misapprehension to refer generally to conflict or disagreement. It’s too vague to begin a reference, various critics agreed, alluding to the 1938 play and the 1940/44 films.
5. Moving forward
Misuse, overuse and futility. “Where else would we go?” asked a sage – since we can’t actually travel back in time. “It can also refer to ‘make a way for me,’ as in, ‘How can we move forward?’ Well, guess what? Sometimes you can’t,” said another wit. Politicians and bosses often use it for the “semantic legitimacy” of self-interest, evasion or insincerity. His relatives, “going forward”, expelled in 2001, also received votes.
6. Amazing
“Not everything is amazing; and when you think about it, it’s very little,” explained one opponent. “This glorious word should be reserved for that which is dazzling, touching, or inspiring,” to paraphrase another, “like the divine face of a newborn.” It was first banished for misuse, overuse and uselessness in 2012. Its cyclical return forces further transcendence of the modifier “generic”, “banal and empty” – an “adjective consumed by people with a lack of vocabulary”.
7. Does this make sense?
The applicants dismissed the desire, perhaps the request, for clarification or affirmation as filler, uncertainty and passive aggression. “Why say it, if you have to ask?” It just doesn’t make sense!” tsk-tsked one. In this call for reassurance or act of false modesty, questioners twist respondents into “co-conspirators,” another drew. Needy, deceitful and/or cynical. Let me be clear, the judges said: Always make sense; don’t think out loud and don’t play games! Misuse, overuse and futility.
8. Regardless
Sleuth’s Confession: “My hair hurts.” And it should, because it’s not a word. At most, it is a non-standard word, according to some dictionaries. “Regardless” is enough. Opponents disqualified it as a double negative. One conveyed that the prefix “ir” + “regardless” = redundancy. “Take ‘regardless’ and wear it for emphasis, showing off your mastery of words that don’t exist,” said one exasperated correspondent, adding, “Why isn’t that on your list?” Abuse.
9. Absolutely
Banished in 1996, but deserves a repeat not given its overuse. The simple “yes” was usurped, complains one contributor. Another condemned it as “the current default for expressing agreement, endemic on TV in one-on-one interviews”. Often “said too loudly by annoying people who think they’re better than you,” complained one annoyed observer. “It looks like it comes with a warranty when that might not be the case,” warned one wary supervisor.
10. It is what it is
Banned in 2008 for overuse, misuse and uselessness: “nonsense”, “cop”, “Only Yogi Berra should be allowed to pronounce such a circumstance”. His resurrection prompted these insights: “Well, duh.” “No kidding.” “Of course that’s what it is! What else would it be? It would be strange if it wasn’t what it wasn’t.” “Tautology”. “It adds no value.” “The verbal crutch.” “An excuse not to deal with reality or accept responsibility.” “Contemptuous, borderline rude.”
“Our linguists, editors and philosophers, our comedians, gatekeepers and pundits did not resign themselves to the task of mass miscommunication. Instead, they offered insightful thoughts about rampant verbal and written blunders with equal parts amusement, despair, and anger. But our nominators insisted, and our Arts and Letters faculty judges agreed, that to decree the 2023 Banned Word List as DHI is tantamount to gaslighting. Does that make sense?” said LSSU President Dr. Rodney S. Hanley. “Regardless, moving on, it is what it is: an absolutely amazing unintentional and incompetent point that skips so many mouths and fingers.”
For more about the Banished Words list and to nominate a word or term for banishment for 2024, go online to lssu.edu/banishedwords.
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