Banished Words from Michigan’s Lake Superior State; Wayne State University’s Words to Revive
Lake Superior State University (LSSU) in Michigan’s upper peninsula recently announced its 37th annual voter-generated list of banned words for 2012. Meanwhile, says Michigan Radio, Detroit’s Wayne State University has proffered a list of suggestions for defunct words to revive. Here’s a fact box about both word lists: the repellent and resurrection-worthy.
LSSU’s most-wanted list
At a New Year’s Eve party in 1975, faculty at LSSU generated a list of top ten most annoying phrases that they wished to see stricken from common parlance. Each year since then, people have nominated words that they would like to obliterate. The most irritating phrases of the year are added to a list which has become known somewhat fatuously as the “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness.” The LSSU group dubbed itself “Unicorn Hunters” and a Facebook page sprang up around the annual word-burning event. Some words and phrases, such as 2012′s “amazing” have even earned their own Facebook flagging page. There is a form to nominate pet word peeves for next year as well.
List of Past Offenders
A perusal of LSSU’s complete word list is like a stroll down verbal memory lane. There are words from every sector of life. The list includes redundant phrases (“adults over 21,” 1988), computer-generated text-speak like “<3″ from 2009, kitschy phrases (“git-er-done,” 2006), occupational jargon (“bi-partisanship,” 2002), buzzwords such as “detente” (1976),Replica Bulzeye, malapropisms including “deproliferation” (1992) and circumvented curses like “friggin” from 2002. Phrases may be metaphorical, hyperbolic, trite or just plain inane.
2012 Banished Words
This year, voters said they would see these phrases nixed from speech:
* “amazing”
* “baby bump”
* “shared sacrifice”
* “occupy”
* “blowback”
* “man cave”
* “the new normal”
* “win the future”
* “pet parent”
* “trickeration”
* “ginormous”
* “Thank you in advance.”
WSU’s list of words to resuscitate
Instead of removing phrases, WSU’s “Word Warriors of the Week” are in the business of bringing disused and dormant expressions back into favor. Voters may submit words for consideration on this website, as well. Here are WSU’s “remarkably useful and expressive words that deserve more chances to enrich our language” for the new year.
* antediluvian (“before the flood,” antiquated)
* erstwhile (former)
* execrable (atrocious, abominable)
* frisson (sudden, involuntary prickling of the flesh during extreme emotion)
* parlous (arduous, fraught with danger)
* penultimate (next to the last)
* sisyphean (complete waste of time and energy)
* supercilious (haughty, imperious)
* transmogrify (to totally change into a horrifying new shape)
* truckle (sycophantic, bowing and scraping)
Marilisa Kinney Sachteleben writes about people, places, events and issues in her native “Pure Michigan.”