Nov 22
Nov 23, 2022
“No worries” ranked second in Lake Superior State University’s annual tongue-in-cheek Banished Words List for misuse, overuse, and uselessness of communication for 2022. “At the end of the day” came in third. The most popular phrasing people nationwide and worldwide loved to hate: “Wait, what?”
That being said (No. 4), one week remains for a new normal (No. 8) for the supply chain (No. 10) of the English vocabulary. Submit nominations for the Banished Words List for 2023 by 8 AM Eastern Standard Time on Nov. 30, 2022, at lssu.edu/banishedwords.
LSSU will circle back (No. 6) on the deep dive (No. 7) and announce results on Dec. 31, 2022, to start the New Year on the right foot, er, tongue.
Lake State has compiled its yearly mock-serious Banished Words List since 1976 to uphold, protect, and support excellence in language by encouraging avoidance of words and terms that are hackneyed, redundant, oxymoronic, clichéd, illogical, nonsensical—and otherwise ineffective, baffling, or irritating.
Conversational-based words and terms dominated the 1,250-plus submissions last year, with more than 1,000 about the colloquial and seven of them making the (in)famous reject pile of ten. Judges also selected to disallow three examples related to COVID-19 terminology.
Over the decades, LSSU has received tens of thousands of nominations for the list, which now totals more than 1,000 entries. Examples of the winners (or should that be losers?) to make the yearly compilation: “detente,” “surely,” “classic,” and “bromance,” plus “wrap my head around,” “user friendly,” “at this point in time,” and “viable alternative.” The Banished Words List has become such a cultural phenomenon that comedian George Carlin submitted an entry that made the annals in 1994: “baddaboom, baddabing.”
