WORDS THAT NEED TO BE BANISHED THIS YEAR INCLUDE: “GOAT” AND “GASLIGHTING”

Since it’s a new year, maybe it’s a good time to reboot our vocabularies.  Lake Superior State University in Michigan released its annual list of words and phrases that need to be banished in the New Year.  They have been releasing this list since 1976…

The list serves "to uphold, protect, and support excellence in language by encouraging avoidance of words and terms that are overworked, redundant, oxymoronic, clichéd, illogical, nonsensical -- and otherwise ineffective, baffling, or irritating," according to the university

Here are the ones they say we should stop using or overusing in 2023 . . .

1.  “GOAT” . . . as in Greatest of All Time.

2.  “Inflection point”

3.  “Quiet quitting”

4.  “Gaslighting” – even though it was just named Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2022.

5.  “Moving forward”

6.  “Amazing”

7.  “Does that make sense?”

8.  “Irregardless”

9.  “Absolutely”

10.  “It is what it is”

LSSU.edu has mini write-ups on each.

You can revisit the previous “banished words” here.  The ones from last year that were supposed to be banished from 2022 included:  “Circle back,” “Deep dive,” “New Normal,” “Supply chain,” and “No worries.”