(Ng eg te le Al a A

The overused word on the street

A dissection of this year’s literary offenders

 

 

Jacey Gibb

  
  
 
 
 
   
  
  
   
 
 
  
  
   
    
 
 
  
  
   
   
   
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
   
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
 

ood news! Everyone’s favourite online
assessment of the most overused and abused
words/sayings in the English language is finally
here! The Lake Superior State University 2011 list of
banished words! I know what you’re thinking. “But
acey, coming up with an opinion of what I think of the
ist is TOO HARD!” Luckily, I’m here to save you from
ndependent thought and give you my own word by word
evaluation. I swear, sometimes I spoil you guys.

14. Live life to the fullest- It’s weird that this saying is

as popular as it is considering North America is kankle
deep in the battle against obesity. Looking at it now, it
ust seems like the slogan for Buffetworld.

13. Facebook/Google as verbs- Agree! Agree! Agree!
oogle I don’t mind so much but when at a party
someone asks what my facebook is, my body’s auto-
defence system usually kicks in and I provide an alias

or them to track down instead (one time, someone
believed my name was Beer Gibb). To me, facebook is a
mechanism allowing short/long distance communication
between friends and family. If you’re the kind of person
asking me for my facebook when we’ ve only been
alking for five minutes, I’m going to decline the offer to
be another notch on your friends list bedpost.

12. I’m just sayin’- The ultimate weapon for
backtracking in a conversation. You can say anything
you want and people aren’t supposed to take offence
because, don’t worry about it, you’re ‘just sayin”. Kind
of counterproductive to have to point it out though,
onsidering I was there to hear you say it.

11. The American people- This is one I never stopped

o think about; I just assumed it was some kind of
equirement for when addressing the public. It does seem
odd though, as one of the word nominators commented,
hat you have to specify that all Americans are people.
hey obviously never met my ex wife.

10. Mama Grizzlies- Really?

9. Refudiate- Sarah Palin is on fire this year, securing
wo spots on the list of banished words (the other

being the above Mama Grizzlies). Refudiate is a word
she created by combining refute and repudiate, two
words that are equally effective on their own, but when
combined form a SUPER WORD. I should probably
point out refudiate’s absurdity or poke fun at Sarah Palin,
but I think she’s doing a fine enough job doing that
herself.

8. Man up- Apparently one of the people who nominated
is one saying labelled it as ‘bullying’ and even ‘sexist’.
Honestly, I think they just need to clam down, reconsider
heir view of the phrase and go make me a sandwich.

. bff- This seemingly innocent acronym has been
floating around cyber space for years; we should have
shed it when we had the chance. Unfortunately, it
began to replicate into even longer, more unnecessary
strings of b’s and f’s to stand for idiotic sayings such

as ‘best bitches for forever’, ‘beyond bestest boyfriend
orever’ or even “best boiled frog feet”. That last one I
ight have made up. 5 ;

. Back story- I can’t recall a single experience I’ve had
where someone even used this term around me.

. Aha moment- The moment that comes when you

finally solve the murder on the night train from Paris and
you exclaim ‘Aha!’ I think my problem with many of the
items on this list is that at one point, these were original
takes on overused words (eg. Realization) and were cool,
but have now become overused themselves. It’s the circle
of vocabulary life.

4. Wow factor- Something every junior high musical
play director aspires to capture. I understand it’s over-
usage but ‘goly gee factor’ just isn’t as effective.

3. Fail- Although it’s justified making the list, this
antonym for success was one of the most effective words
in history to crush a person’s self-esteem with. It didn’t
matter if they were a blind quadriplegic who just painted
the greatest mural of all time; all someone had to do

was say the f word and they felt as miserable as Jennifer
Aniston.

2. Epic- A term once used to describe everything from
summer road trips to meatball marinara sandwiches,
Epic soon became stripped of any positive attributes and

instead became the quintessential word in the Cool Dad
dictionary.

1. Viral- In my opinion, this is the one word that doesn’t
make sense. We live in a world that revolves around
social networking sites, google maps and videos of
monkeys hitting tigers and yet when someone creates a
word for it, it’s a pifiata that people want to tear apart. It
does seem unnecessary when you could simply say ‘on
the web’, but I’m not sure why that warrants this making
it to number one.

After viewing this list, it just seems redundant,
considering you probably already knew what words were
being overused. I’m just sayin’ that this list was kind of
an epic fail. By the way, did I mention The Other Press
has gone viral? Visit us online at www.theotherpress.ca.
Now man up and check it out. Signed, your bff Jacey. PS
Mama Grizzlies.

 

 

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