Misused, overused and useless words
Every year, Lake Superior State University produces a List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness - well, words that they believe should be banished anyway.
Their list of 2008 includes wordsmith and the verb to author as ones pertinent to what we do, but also includes overused phrases that crop up a lot in sports commentary (particularly in the US) and words such as random and sweet which are used out of their traditional context.
Anyone got any to add? I’ll admit the one on their list that I’d most like to see banished is webinar – a seminar conducted over the web. It’s ugly. Although maybe it should be reduced to binar in the same way that web log became blog?
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Tags: lists
I’m glad to see “Sweet” in the list of banished words. One of my classmates uses it all the time – it’s annoying !
One I’d have liked to see banished is “so” used in sentences like “I so love this guy !” or `”He’s so dead !”. I’m not sure this use of “so” is correct, as I’m not a native speaker, but I’m tired of hearing it…
Well, that use of ’so’ isn’t totally wrong – in more archaic English, it would have been used for emphasis (as now) as ‘I love this guy so!’
‘He’s so dead’ is definitely not quite the right usage though. And I admit to being occasionally guilty of it, though usually in an ironic way (honest).
‘Sweet’ should only be used by surfer dude turtles, as in Finding Nemo.
Webinar.
I’ve never seen this word before now and I’m rather glad about that fact. It hurts my brain. It’s just ugly. If I could only get rid of one word on that list, it would be this one, though I would definitely feel slightly disappointed that I had to keep ‘random’. The usage of that is generally enough to make my brain dribble out my ears.