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Reply With Quoteroflcopter...I'll lollerskate over to my friend's party and tell them about this list.
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Tweets, sexting "unfriended" in U.S. banned word list - Yahoo! NewsTweets, sexting "unfriended" in U.S. banned word list
By Carey Gillam Carey Gillam
Thu Dec 31, 12:30 pm ET
KANSAS CITY (Reuters) – If you recently tweeted about how you were chillaxin for the holiday, take note: Fifteen particularly over- or mis-used words and phrases have been declared "shovel-ready" to be "unfriended" by a U.S. university's annual list of terms that deserve to be banned.
After thousands of nominations of words and phrases commonly used in marketing, media, technology and elsewhere, wordsmiths at Lake Superior State University on Thursday issued their 35th annual list of words that they believe should be banned.
Tops on the Michigan university's list of useless phrases was "shovel-ready." The term refers to infrastructure projects that are ready to break ground and was popularly used to describe road, bridge and other construction projects fueled by stimulus funds from the Obama administration.
And speaking of stimulus, that word -- which was applied to government spending aimed at boosting the economy -- made the over-used category as well, along with an odd assortment of Obama-related constructions such as Obamacare and Obamanomics.
"We say Obamanough already," the LSSU committee said.
Also ripe for exile is "sexting," shorthand for sexy text messaging, a habit that has caused trouble this year for public figures from politicians to star athletes.
Similarly, list makers showed distaste for tweeting, retweeting and tweetaholics, lingo made popular by users of the popular Twitter networking website. And don't even get them started on the use of friend as a verb, as in: "He made me mad so I unfriended him on Facebook," an Internet social site.
Male acquaintances need to find another word than "bromance" for their friendships, and the combination of "chillin" and "relaxin'" into "chillaxin" was an easy pick for banishment.
VOTED OUT
Also making the list was "teachable moment."
"This phrase is used to describe everything from potty-training to politics. It's time to vote it out!" said one list contributor.
"Toxic assets," referring to financial instruments that have plunged in value, sickened list makers so much the phrase was added to the list, along with the tiresome and poorly defined "too big to fail" which has often been invoked to describe wobbly U.S. banks.
Similarly, "in these economic times" was deemed overdue for banishment due.
Also making the list -- "transparent/transparency," typically used, contributors said, when the situation is anything but transparent.
One list contributor wanted to know if there was an "app," short-hand for "application" popularized by the mobile iPhone's growing array of software tools, for making that annoying word go away.
And rounding out the list -- "czar" as in car czar, drug czar, housing czar or banished word czar.
"Purging our language of 'toxic assets' is a 'stimulus' effort that's 'too big to fail,'" said a university spokesman.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
roflcopter...I'll lollerskate over to my friend's party and tell them about this list.
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.
I find the irony of this article to be beautiful. No one controls language, and yet, here's a university that's trying to do such a thing (while the list may simply be a fun way of tracing the development of English on the margins now, it certainly must have started out as being serious).
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3
If anything, it sounds a little like the way the French protect their language. I can understand if the ban applies to the use of such neologism in the homework submitted; otherwise it is just snottiness and self-promotion at work.
Of course, if you hear how the locals here mangle English... *shudders* , you'd really want the language police to be out in force.
Guys:
I would normally agree with you all, but lately buzz-words & -phrases have hit a new high. Or low. If I hear "toxic assets" or "under-water mortgage" again I'll lose my lunch. "Shovel-ready" Sheeit. There ought to be a sticky thread devoted to English hackneyism somewhere here. It would salve my soul, & be amusing, too.
The normally resistant to linguistic emetics Prof
If only someone would tell the French:Originally Posted by Shek
Académie française - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Looks to me like somebody just wanted to get their University in the news.
Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C
Hey Maeda, it's so......BOOMZ. :P
Singlish certainly has charms...cough....all of its own.
Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C
Purgation indeed! ....sigh....
And on the sixth day, God created the Field Artillery...
Whatever happened to the great language which once and still acts as the most common link for the world...some people may call it evolution
but i am not buying it
Thank parents.
Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.
Come on....it's Lake Superior State for heavens sake....how else are they going to get in the news aside from collegiate hockey scores?
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories." Thomas Jefferson
I thought it was "twit(s)":
twit(3) (twit) n. Informal. an insignifigant or bothersome preson. [1920-25; perh. orig. n. deriv. of """get an OED'''''
Hey you twitter devotees... You are a bunch of twits...
Not a bunch of twats... why would I say that? So offensive!
BTW. How do they taste? That pejoritave that you like to refer to me and the folks who think like me?
How do "deez nutz" taste?
The decline of the English language is direct result of the meddling instigated by Teddie Roosevelt. As our gormless dictator - Gormless Bruin - keeps reminding us: It started in America....
Last edited by FluffyThoughts; 22 Jan 10, at 08:48. Reason: Not sure if Teddie was a Theodore or an Edward, so hedged my bets....
Teddie? Jesus. If he's responsible for deforming the language he's taken his f*ckin' time. I do like "gormless bruin", though. If I could only track down "gorm."The decline of the English language is direct result of the meddling instigated by Teddie Roosevelt. As our gormless dictator - Gormless Bruin - keeps reminding us: It started in America....
"Teachable moment." A clear (& urgent) reason for public execution. "Twitter" is obviously related to "twit." Clearly. That's enough. The body politic (or talking heads) who can't even use the word "parameter" correctly should be consumed by climate change & roast or, alternatively, freeze (as a subtle byproduct), to death.
Confusedly,
Demented Prof
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