Trendy, trite, euphemistic or just plain inaccurate - Lake Superior State University singled out 17 words and phrases that should be banished…
Any others that you think should get flushed?
The 2004 list of banished words
Metrosexual: An urban male who pays a great deal of attention to appearance. Critics say we don’t need another word for this.
X: As in X-files, Xtreme, Windows XP and X-Box.
Punked: To dupe, popularized by the MTV show Punk’d.
Place Stamp Here: Printed on return envelopes.
Companion animals: Also known as pets.
Bling or Bling-Bling: Flashy jewelry.
LOL: E-mail speak for “laughing out loud.”
Embedded Journalist.
Smoking Gun.
Shock and Awe.
Captured Alive.
Shots Rang Out.
Ripped From the Headlines: TV shows loosely based on current events are described this way.
Sweat Like a Pig: The problem is pigs don’t sweat.
In Harm’s Way.
Hand-Crafted Latte.
Sanitary Landfill: Also known as a dump.
Neoconservative: an angry liberal, or a conservative who feels so guilty about his darkest fears that he welcomes a liberal solution to them and mistakes the concomitant reduction in guilt as evidence of healthy nationalism, or anti-anti-Americanism (any sudden self-realization of the latter condition can be assuaged by only one thing, firepower, which also happens to act as the angry liberal’s guiltily appreciated vent).
I could happily say goodbye to all those tired old cliches, hackneyed phrases and the daft PC expressions that get bandied about. Doesn’t mean I can’t use them myself whenever I feel like it, though, ok ?
My pet peeve is that old chestnut, ethnic cleansing. Surely cleansing should always be used in inverted commas, thus: ethnic ‘cleansing’. Otherwise it looks like the writer is in agreement with the beliefs behind the practice. I haven’t expressed it very well, but I hope you get what I mean.
it’s all very well to get rid of certain words as long as there is a suitable alternative. You may be right about PC, Paogao, but what else instead? Fear of causing offence? How about ‘euphemistic embolism’? Yes, I like it. You heard it here first.
Another word that bugs me intensely is ‘closure’. Don’t ask me why, it just does.
The term’s used more as a unilateral dismissal of entire arguments these days than its original meaning of politically correct, which was another way of saying ‘overly sensitive’. Then it came to mean ‘insincere’, as if people were taking these positions out of some alterior motive. Now it just means ‘shut up you stupid idiot’.
Where did that come from? Is it US, UK or Aussie slang? Is its time almost up?[/quote]
Its time never was, although formosa seemed to toss it around a lot. Just where exactly did it come from?
American Born Chinese and Canadian Born Chinese. These are lame. Am I a Canadian Born Scot or a Canadian born Brit. These terms seperate us. I don’t like it. If you are born in Canada you are Canadian if you are born in the States you are American, 'nuff said.
We could just banish hip-hop as far as I’m concerned. But that’s impossible so we can banish bad hip-hop spelling like writing 2 or II instead of to. Example: Boyz II Men (Note to Michael Jackson: They are not a delivery service.)
Writing z instead of s.
To ease the pain
Of changing from Boyz II Men
No one to guide me
I’m all alone
No one to cry on
I need shelter from the rain
To ease the pain
Of changing from Boyz II Men
No one to guide me
I’m all alone
No one to cry on
I need shelter from the rain
To ease the pain
Of changing from Boyz II Men
Here we go again
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