Banished Words of 2008

This doesn’t have to do with anything currently in the news such as Governor J’s appointment of IL Attorney General Burris to fill Obama’s vacant Senate seat despite being warned not to do so. Or how Israel is getting pummeled again. Or that they had to close the food/weapons road (sue me, I can’t remember what it’s called) into Afghanistan because it’s been pirated so much and is now considered extremely unsafe.

I can’t say that I’m surprised with some of the 15 words that made the list:

“going green” - in reference to corporations declaring themselves environmentalists; I guess if you can buy clean air so technically you are not polluting it, you are "going" quite the opposite.

“maverick” – if you paid any sort of attention to the RNC’s poorly run campaign, you’ll know why this made the list.

“monkey” – because supposedly people think it makes anything sound cooler if they put this word in front of it. Really?

Here are my suggestions:

“like” – it’s not supposed to be used after every other word when speaking out loud. It is not meant to signify a pause. It needs to leave a person’s vocabulary unless they intend it as a real metaphor.

“totally” – this makes you sound like an airhead, especially when coupled with “dude”.

“awesome” – same goes for this one especially since the word means “to be left in awe”; more often than not this word is used incorrectly

“wifebeater” – it’s a tank top and the name makes light of a very serious situation that effects thousands of women and their children every year.

“gay” – as an adjective to describe anything other than people or the fact a individual is very happy (it’s original meaning).

There are others but they get into their overuse more than the fact they need to be banned. Got any others?

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