Friday, January 1, 2010

Unfriending 2010's Banished Words

Lake Superior State University has been publishing a list of words that should be banished for "Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness" every New Year's since 1975. As you can imagine, lots of these words are political, but many cover social and tech trends as well.

This years list includes the aforementioned unfriend (and friend...basically any use of friend as a verb), Czar, Tweet, Teachable Moment (I wanted that one gone a long time ago!), and any use of Obama as a prefix of root.

If there is a word you think that should be banished, don't go ballistic (1993), there is a definite possibility (1993) they may have beat you to the punch so don't feel disenfranchised (2002). Bipartisanship had a bit of a comeback early in the year when Obama wanted to work across the aisle, but that word was already banished in 2002. i-Anything made the list in 2007. The complete list is full of interesting factoids (2001).

For sure (1981) check out the list...for the children (2000). It's a great source of infotainment (1986, 1989). After all, it's that time of year again (2009).

3 comments:

OrbsCorbs said...

lol. I didn't even know that "bromance" was a word.

I agree with most of them. Language is alive and evolves, but not every mutation is a good one.

kkdither said...

It is amazing how much language changes. The French hate that we have so much influence on their language.

If you listen carefully when people speak other languages, you hear a lot of our influence, with new lingo that there isn't a word to translate to.

kkdither said...

Oh, I forgot to add, like, as if....