Don’t use these words and phrases anymore, eh?*

Every year Lake Superior State University – or “Lake State,” as the locals call it – issues a “Banished Words List” containing words and phrases that are either misused, overused or useless and therefore deserving of exile from our collective vocabulary. The list has been released every year since 1976; people nominate words and phrases from everyday speech throughout the year and a special committee selects the “winners,” as it were (“as it were” didn’t make the list), and announces ‘em on New Year’s Day.

For whatever reason (didn’t make the list), we don’t have to wait until Sunday this year – the 2012 list was posted in Facebook yesterday.

I’m not sure why everybody cares what Michigan’s smallest university – its student population stands at just 3,000 – thinks about word usage. The school, located in Sault Ste. Marie in the northeastern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, is known for its fisheries and wildlife management, criminal justice, fire science and environmental health programs and houses a robotics laboratory valued at over $3 million. I can see the place being famous for that, or for the big snowmobile race held on its campus each year, or for its tradition of burning a giant snowman every March to declare an end to winter – the practice was cancelled in 1992 because environmentalists protested but the community objected and the tradition was resumed the following year – but I’m not sure why it’s become the harbinger of acceptable language. Go figure (didn’t make the list).

Anyway, without further ado (didn’t make the list), the list for 2012:

• Amazing

• Baby Bump

• Shared Sacrifice

• Occupy

• Blowback

• Man Cave

• The New Normal

• Pet Parent

• Win the Future

• Trickeration

• Ginormous

• Thank you in advance

Of these 12 words or phrases, I admit to regularly using five (“amazing,” “shared sacrifice,” “occupy,” “man cave” and “thank you in advance”) and occasionally using two more (“baby bump” and “ginormous”). I’ve ridiculed President Obama for using “win the future” and would pull my eyelashes out with a pair of needle nose pliers (didn’t make the list) in the dark before I ever used “the new normal,” “pet parent” or “trickeration.” I’ve never used “blowback” but I’ve received a fair amount of it in response to some of what I’ve written so I may incorporate the word into my vocabulary irregardless of what Lake State advises. (Just kidding; I never use “irregardless.”)

For a list of every word or phrase that ever made the list, visit here. To nominate your own least favorite words and phrases, visit here. Just don’t nominate anything you found here at “What’s the Diehl?,” okay? I’ll be grateful for the foreseeable future (made the list in 2002), dawg (made the list in 2006). Thank you in advance.

Have a good one (made the list in 2001)!


* “Eh” made the list in 1979