Michigan School Releases ‘Banished Words’ List For 2012
My alma mater, Lake Superior State University (the smallest public university in Michigan and your last stop before Canada,) has released it's annual "List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness". This is the 37th annual list, which started as a publicity ploy by the school's public relations department on New Year's Day 1976.
This year's additions to the list are some good ones. "Baby bump", "man cave" and "ginormous" ranked pretty high, along with "occupy".
Bill Drewes, one of the many people who nominate "occupy" for the list said,
'Occupy Wall Street' grew to become Occupy 'insert name of your city here' all over the country. It should be banished because of the media overuse and now people use it all the time, i.e. 'I guess we will occupy your office and have the meeting there.' 'We are headed to Grandma's house – Occupy Thanksgiving is under way.
The word "amazing" was the most hated and collected the most votes for being overused and generally annoying. One of my least favorite phrases "thank you in advance" also made the list. The entire list, plus banned words from years past can be viewed on Lake State's website.
Are there any other words you would like to add to the list? I vote for "Kardashian".