2012 Banished Words List

Lake Superior State University has been releasing an annual list of “banished words” for thirty-seven years now. These are words that LSSU deems as misused, overused and generally useless. This year’s list finally includes the highly overused “amazing”. There had apparently been so much over-use of the word by television programs hosts, and reality TV stars that a Facebook page was started encouraging people to submit the word to LSSU for inclusion. Other words and phrases on this year’s list are occupy, baby bump, man cave, shared sacrifice, win the future, and three words that would make Sarah Palin proud, blowback - a word made up by corporate types for backlash, trickeration - used by football analysts to describe trickery, and ginormous - a combination of gigantic and enormous, which must mean really, really, really big. At some time or another we have all been guilty of using, if not these particular offenders, then some that would be considered equally annoying. While LSSU’s list of banished words isn’t an effort to control the language, as some people have perceived it to be, it is a tool meant to inspire people to think about the language they use to express themselves.