It’s That Time of the Year Again

Some of us might recall an infatuation that we all had with the phrase “Where’s the beef?” We all loved to say it until one day it just disappeared from the culture because we were all sick and tired of hearing it

And if you’ve really been around awhile you might remember “Look Ma, no cavities!” and how it got twisted into lots of other things you wanted Ma to look at.

Both of those examples were from commercials. These days commercials don’t have the same impact on our culture as they did back a couple of decades ago.

But those tired and often repeated words and phrases are still with us, but they now come to us from news, entertainment, the internet and politics. Case in point: Lake Superior University has an annual list of words and phrases that they would like to see “Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.”

I couldn’t agree more. So for your perusal, here are the 15 finalists: words and phrases they’d like to see disappear from newsprint and the airwaves . . . forever.

1. Green
2. Carbon footprint
3. Maverick
4. First Dude
5. Bailout
6. Wall Street / Main Street
7. -monkey (used as a suffix)
8. <3
9. Icon
10. Game changer
11. Staycation
12. Desperate search
13. Not so much (as in “I wish they wouldn’t use the term ‘not so much’ not so much”)
14. Winner of five nominations
15. It’s that time of the year again