Spoiler Alert: Blogging over the Fiscal Cliff

Last year I wrote about words added to the OED and expressed my love for the English language. A language of lexicon representing who we are: over-bloated know-it-alls swallowing new words till they clog the arteries of our already morbidly obese dictionary bodies.

Wow! That sentence could use a sprinkling of more word-salt.

There's even a dictionary dedicated to one word.

For some of us words are the McDonald’s french fries of life: crispy and hot when they’re fresh, and potato rot twigs when they’re old and cold. That’s why we need ways of exercising the language and burning off some of the fatty calories.

Excess words don’t add more ways to express ourselves. It’s not in our nature. We latch onto all things new and cool, forsaking old language. Old words lie on the shelf and new fries take their place, over-salted, over-used, and oh so tasty.

Don’t believe me?  Have you ever seen a rod iron fence or eaten cold slaw? Well the fence may look rod, and the slaw may seem cold but that’s not what they are. They’re wrought and cole, words we’ve forgotten. They’re words that fell between the seats of the car and left us wondering, “What is that smell?”

It’s wrought and cole. And all the words like them. 

That’s why I love Michigan’s Lake Superior State University. For the past 37 years they’ve created yearly lists of “banished words.” Words and phrases to eliminate from overuse, misuse, or simply because they’re more annoying than the stranger licking your french fries.

No, really.  Look up, he’s doing it again.

Number one on the 2013 “banished” list was “Fiscal Cliff.” Yeah, I think we’ve heard all we wanted about that term to last us through next fall.

“Guru” and “Spoiler Alert” also made the list. Guru because we’re all self proclaimed gurus of something as meh as blogging, and “Spoiler Alert” because, in LSSU’s words, “"What was once a polite warning has turned into a declarative statement: I have just spoiled something for you.”

Spoiler Alert: I couldn’t agree more.

There are other words on the list that show our love of politics and online marketing like “job creation” and “trending,” and others like “YOLO” (You Only Live Once) that show general dissatisfaction at the stale fries being shoved in our face.

Older lists show our history. In 1976 they banned “Detente” because it was “Invented by Henry Kissinger. Nobody else knows what it means, and now even Kissinger has forgotten.” Newer lists show our fear of where we’re going, like in 2010 when they tried banishing “tweet,” “app,” “bromance,” and the verb form of “friend.” Apparently several million people never got that memo.

So this year I’m doing my part. I’m passing along the list. Let’s vacuum up all the stale word-fries before they mold our vocabulary.  Visit their Website, or like LSSU on Facebook. You can even make suggestions for 2014.  Let’s start by suggesting terms like “cra-cra,” and, while we’re at it, “shambolic,” before it catches on.

Don’t touch “meh,” that fry is mine.