- Gitmo instead of Guanatamo Bay: as one complaining reader points out, this "conjures up an image of a fluffy and sweet character from a Japanese anime show".
- Combined celebrity names: say goodbye to TomKat and Brangelina.
- Awesome: given a one-year moratorium in 1984, now banished forever.
- Gone or went missing: this makes it sound like "missing" is a place you can visit.
- Pwned: originally a mistyping of "owned", now sometimes actually used in speech.
- Now playing in theaters: where else would movies be shown? (On DVD, I suppose.)
- We're pregnant: actually, one of "we" is usually a bit more pregnant than the other.
- Undocumented alien: according to one disgruntled reader, this is like saying a drug dealer is an "undocumented pharmacist".
- Armed robbery/drug deal gone bad
- Truthiness
- Ask your doctor: the "chewable vitamin morphine of marketing".
- Chipotle: I had to look this up, as I've never heard it before: it's apparently a type of jalapeno.
- i-anything: iPod, and its brethren. e-anything made the list in 2000.
- Search: has, apparently, been replaced by "google".
- Healthy food: as one reader points out, if her fish were healthy, it would be swimming somewhere. The correct word is "healthful".
- Boasts, when used to describe houses: "The master bedroom boasts his-and-her fireplaces". However, phrases such as the "The bathroom apologizes for cracked linoleum" are never used.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Pwned!
Today's online Globe and Mail contains an article on Lake Superior State University's annual list of banished words, which they have been producing every year since 1975. The words that the university would like to see banned this year are: