A Glance Back – Word Banishment!
Sue Harrison, 2012, Lake Superior State University
Evening News Photograph
Way back in the mid-1980s, I was a young mother who had just completed her first novel – Mother Earth Father Sky. I was receiving enough rejection letters from publishers and agents to wallpaper our living room. To shore up my sagging self-esteem, I decided to temporarily set aside my dream of becoming a novelist and get a real job. My husband agreed with my decision, but only IF the job would help build my writing skills. That doesn’t sound like an impossible situation until you take into account that we lived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where jobs are scare, and writing jobs are almost non-existent.
A week later, I was looking through the local newspaper and found a job listing for a WRITER for Lake Superior State College’s PR department. Definitely an answer to prayer, and I’d been praying hard.
Two weeks later, I had that job. My boss, Bill Rabe, who had worked for the Detroit News as a reporter and columnist, was one of the few true geniuses I’ve ever met. When he moved his family to Sault Ste. Marie from Detroit, he gave himself the challenge of trying to make a little 3,000- student college world famous. The amazing thing is that he succeeded.
One of his many PR triumphs is Lake State’s annual Word Banishment List. Every January 1 (a slow news day as Bill well knew) the PR folks at Lake Superior State release a list of words that they deem should be banished from “The Queen’s English.” Since the 1980s those lists have consistently made the news, not just the local news but US and Canadian national news. Not just US and Canadian national news, but news venues in Europe and Australia and Asia and — Wow! all over the world!
The Lake State PR Department takes nominations from anyone, anywhere, and then a group of word-gurus cull through the hundreds of nominations that have arrived through letters, Tweets, and emails, debating and deciding until they’ve completed the year’s final list.
I thought you might like to see some of the highlights from the 2014 LSSU’s Word Banishment news release:
SELFIE
Has the honor of receiving the most nominations this year.
“People have taken pictures of themselves for almost as long as George Eastman’s company made film and cameras. Suddenly, with the advent of smartphones, snapping a ‘pic’ of one’s own image has acquired a vastly overused term that seems to pop up on almost every form of social media available to us….A self-snapped picture need not have a name all its own beyond ‘photograph.’ It may only be a matter of time before photos of one’s self and a friend will become ‘dualies.’ LSSU has an almost self-imposed duty to carry out this banishment now.” – Lawrence, Coventry, Conn. and Ryan, North Andover, Mass.
“Named ‘Word of the Year’ by Oxford Dictionary? Give me a break! Ugh, get rid of it.” – Bruce, Ottawa, Ont.
“Myselfie disparages the word because it’s too selfie-serving. But enough about me, how about yourselfie?” – Lisa, New York, NY
“It’s a lame word. It’s all about me, me, me. Put the smartphone away. Nobody cares about you.” — David, Lake Mills, Wisc.
Dayna of Rochester Hills, Mich., laments how many people observe “Selfie Sunday” in social media, and Josh of Tucson, Ariz., asks, “Why can’t we have more selflessies?”
TWERK / TWERKING
Another word that made the Oxford Dictionaries Online this year.
“Let’s just keep with ‘shake yer booty’ — no need to ‘twerk’ it! Hi ho, hi ho, it’s away with twerk we must go.” – Michael, Haslett, Mich.
Bob of Tempe, Ariz. says he responds, “T’werk,” when asked where he is headed on Monday mornings.
“I twitch when I hear twerk, for to twerk proves one is a jerk — or is at least twitching like a jerk. Twerking has brought us to a new low in our lexicon.” – Lisa, New York, NY
“Time to dance this one off the stage.” – Jim, Flagstaff, Ariz.
“The fastest over-used word of the 21st century.” – Sean, New London, NH.
“The newest dictionary entry should leave just as quickly.” – Bruce, Edmonton, Alb.
HASHTAG
“A technical term for a useful means of categorizing content in social media, the word is abused as an interjection in verbal conversation and advertising. #annoying!” – Bob, Grand Rapids, Mich.
“Typed on sites that use them, that’s one thing. When verbally spoken, hashtag-itgetsoldquickly. So, hashtag-knockitoff.” – Kuahmel, Gardena, Calif.
“Used when talking about Twitter, but everyone seems to add it to everyday vocabulary. #annoying #stopthat #hashtag #hashtag #hashtag .” – Alex, Rochester, Mich.
“It’s #obnoxious #ridiculous #annoying and I wish it would disappear.” – Jen, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.
“#sickoftheword” – Brian, Toronto, Ont.
To see the entire list and leave your comments with the Word Banishment gurus (I think they banned the word guru years ago) at Lake State, check out this site: http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php
What words would you add to the list?
Blessings!
Sue
P.S. The photograph above was taken when I was giving the Lake State graduation address a couple of years ago. It’s been my privilege to be a Lake State alum, employee, and also to serve on the Board of Directors. You never know where a writing job will eventually take you. Here’s one word I NEVER want banished: GRATITUDE!
I’m definitely guilty of over using AMAZING! I agree. Let’s ban it!
You certainly hit on one of my pet peeves, Heidi, FICTION NOVEL. One of the reasons I get aggravated when I read that phrase is that if a writer includes FICTION NOVEL (as in “I have written a fiction novel), I know his or her chance of getting a reading from an editor or agent goes down to about 1%.
Thank you, Ruth.
Great article, Sue. I enjoyed that little look back.
I’d like to propose two phrases to banish: first, exact same, for the reason of redundancy. Second, fiction novel. Every novel is fiction. The other form of prose is the non-fiction book.
Being an LSSU alum myself, I am always happy to hear the list of the latest banned words. I haven’t checked, and I bet it has already been mentioned (probably in a prior year), but I think the word, “amazing” has to go.