If you’re sick of “tweet” and “chillaxing” then you can expect to do plenty of smug nodding at the Lake Superior University List of Banned Words.
The juiciest part of the list is the curmudgeonly complaints of fellow word nerds like Mikhail Swift of Hillman, Michigan who said tweeting is “pointless…yet has somehow managed to take the nation by storm. I’m tired of hearing about celebrity X’s new tweet, and how great of a tweeter he or she is.”
The word “app” (short for application used mostly by iPhone owners) offended Edward R. Bolt of Grand Rapids so much he was reduced to texting: “Must we b sbjct to yt another abrv?” Other words scolded were chillaxin (fairly obvious portmanteau of chilling and relaxing), “friend as a verb” (mostly blamed on Facebook) and “bromance”.
The list is the brainchild of former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe who created “word banishment” in 1975 as a New Year’s Eve party game. The university gets thousands of suggestions every year, but few Australian words make the list. It would be a tribute to the former PM if you nominated the Ruddism “working families”.