It's out! The 2011 List

These are my favorites from the 2011 Banished Words List.  These are the ones that make me smile, and I know they've lost some meaning on their way to becoming full-blown cliches.

•  viral
• epic - "Standards for using epic are so low, even awesome is embarrassed."
• wow factor
• aha moment
• BFF
• man up
• I'm just sayin. . . ("And we would never have known if you hadn't told us!")
• facebook/google as verbs
• live life to the fullest

Just what you've all been waiting for

From Lake Superior University,

THE 2010 BANISHED WORD LIST

• SHOVEL-READY
• TRANSPARENT/TRANSPARENCY
• CZAR
• TWEET
• APP
• SEXTING
• FRIEND AS A VERB
• TEACHABLE MOMENT
• IN THESE ECONOMIC TIMES
• STIMULUS
• TOXIC ASSETS
• TOO BIG TO FAIL
• BROMANCE
• CHILLAXIN'
• OBAMA-PREFIX OR ROOT

Which ones do you think should be banished, and were there any that were left out?

Pluto's Revenge

So it seems the American Dialect Society also has a word of the year. And they chose. . .(drum roll, please)

TO PLUTO:--to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet.

Just in case you're mildly interested, past winners are:

• 2005 -- truthiness (what one wishes to be true regardless of the facts)
• 2004 -- red/blue/purple states
• 2003 -- metrosexual (fashion conscious heterosexual male)
• 2002 -- weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)
• 2001 -- 9/11
• 2000 -- chad
• 1999 -- Y2K
• 1998 -- the prefix e- (for electronic, as in email and ecommmerce)
• 1997 -- millenium bug or Y2K bug
• 1996 -- mom(as in soccer mom)
• 1995 -- tie between World Wide Web and newt (to make aggressive changes as a newcomer)
• 1994 -- cyber
• 1993 -- information superhighway
• 1992 -- Not!
• 1991 -- mother of all

It's kind of like a little US history lesson. Anyhow, I warned you; I do like words.(Maybe I should have a Word of the Year contest too!)

Here it is at last. . .

I know you've been waiting for it, and here it is, The Banished Word List for 2007, the 32nd annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.
My personal favorites. . .

• COMBINED CELEBRITY NAMES -- It's bad enough that celebrities have to be the top news stories. Now we've given them obnoxious names such as 'Bragelina,' 'TomKat' and 'Bennifer.'. . . It's so annoying, idiotic and so lame and pathetic that it's 'lamethetic.'
• GONE/WENT MISSING -- It makes 'missing' sound like a place you can visit, such as the Poconos. Is the person missing, or not? She went there but maybe she came back. 'Is missing' or 'was missing' would serve us better.
• WE'RE PREGNANT -- Grounded for nine months. Were men feeling left out of the whole morning sickness/huge belly/labor experience? You may both be expecting, but only one of you is pregnant. . .I'm sure any woman who has given birth will tell you that 'WE' did not deliver the baby.
• UNDOCUMENTED ALIEN -- If they haven't followed the law to get here, they are by definition 'illegal.' It's like saying a drug dealer is an 'undocumented pharmacist.'
• BOASTS -- See classified advertisements for houses, as in 'master bedroom boasts his-and-her fireplaces -- never 'bathroom apologizes for cracked linoleum,' or 'kitchen laments pathetic placement of electrical outlets.'
• SEARCH -- Quasi-anachronism. Might as well banish it. The word has been replaced by 'google.'

Words words words (I do love words!)

How about this quote from Pablo Naruda? Doesn't it just make you smile?

You can say anything you want, yes sir, but it is the words that sing; they soar and descend. I bow to them, I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down.

I love words so much: the unexpected ones; the ones I wait for greedily are stalked until, suddenly, they drop.

Vowels I love: they glitter like colored stones, they leap like silver fish. They are foam, thread, metal, dew.

I run after certain words. They are so beautiful I want to fit them all into my poem. I catch them in mid-flight as they buzz past. I trap them, clean them, peel them.

I set myself in front of a dish: they have a crystalline texture to me: vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agate, like olive. And then I stir them. I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I garnish them, I let them go.

I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coal, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves. Everything exists in the word.

Banished words

Not only do we have the word of the year, we also have a Banished Word List. Yep, every year on New Year's Day, Lake Superior State University releases the annual "List of Words and Phrases Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness." Among the words for 2006 were the following:

hunker down

person of interest

breaking news

97% fat free

dawg

It's not too late to submit your suggestions for the Banished Word List for 2007!

Word of the Year

The New Oxford American Dictionary's Word of the Year is (drum roll, please) "carbon neutral."

Being carbon neutral involves calculating your total climate-damaging carbon emissions, reducing them where possible, and then balancing your remaining emissions, often by purchasing a carbon offset: paying to plant new trees or investing in “green” technologies such as solar and wind power.

Comments from WorldViews:

I know I have never used the word "carbon neutral." And I cannot recall ever hearing an actual human being using it in conversation. It sounds like the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary have been watching Al Gore movies and are trying to do their bit for global warming. Linguistics and dictionaries are supposed to be descriptive, scholars keep telling us, rather than prescriptive, but here we are again with lexicographers instructing us as to what is proper.

My favorite runners-up were dwarf planet and elbow bump.

Just

Anyone out there who likes grammar, do you get annoyed when people pray using the word "just" over and over and over? This article has some good thoughts.

Are you a paraskevidekatriaphobic?

This is not a good day for paraskevidekatriaphobics -- those who fear Friday the 13th. It's double-13 Friday. All the numbers in the numerical notation -- 10/13/2006 -- add up to 13 as well, giving great pause to the superstitious.

Just read this interesting article on The Point. The blogger reminds us of the quote

"The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything."

An interesting thought, but I also found paraskevidekatriaphobics an interesting idea, just because I like numbers and patterns. Remember 1991 was the Year of the Palindrome? You do remember palindromes, don't you? Can you figure these out? (Find the answers at this site.)

Facetious

I've always rather liked the word facetious. Something about the sound of it. Today I liked it even better when I learned it is the only word in the English language with all five main vowels in order. I was mildly disappointed tonight when google search revealed that facetious shares this honor with others. However, I did learn that facetiously is the shortest English word that contains all six vowels in order. Do you ever wonder who thinks up this stuff?