Banished words list for 2023 revealed — did your favorite term make the cut?
“Irregardless” if you love them, 2023 has been deemed an “absolutely” “amazing” time to “quiet quit” misused, overused and useless words “moving forward.”
Continuing its annual tradition, Lake Superior State University has announced its “tongue-in-cheek” collection of 10 “banished” expressions nominated by people from around the world who don’t believe these terms are the “GOAT.”
An acronym for “greatest of all time” — commonly used to describe top-of-their-field figures, such as athletes Michael Jordan and Serena Williams and actors Daniel Day-Lewis and Meryl Streep — GOAT was ranked the “best of the worst.”
Next on the chopping block is “inflection point,” with the list-makers claiming the mathematical term has lost its original meaning. An inflection point, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is “a moment when significant change occurs or may occur.” The expression became 2022’s version of “pivot,” a word that was “banished” in 2021.
Merriam-Webster named “gaslighting” 2022’s word of the year — but it landed at No. 4 on the banished list, behind “quiet quitting,” a trendy but inaccurate term, because the employee doesn’t actually quit.
Another expression added to the list was “irregardless,” since it’s a not-standard way of saying “regardless” that throws on a double-negative as a suffix.
While “amazing” and “absolutely” are actually words, they both have been used to the point that the intensity of their meaning has been lost.
Phrases such as “moving forward,” “Does that make sense?” and “It is what it is” have kept everyday discussions flowing, but they are also being called out for being overused.
“Our linguists, editors, and philosophers, comics, gatekeepers, and pundits didn’t succumb to quiet quitting when laboring over rife miscommunication. Rather, they turned in discerning opinions about rampant verbal and written blunders with equal parts amusement, despair, and outrage,” LSSU president Rodney S. Hanley said in a statement.
“But our nominators insisted, and our Arts and Letters faculty judges concurred, that to decree the Banished Words List 2023 as the GOAT is tantamount to gaslighting. Does that make sense?”
Hanley continued: “Irregardless, moving forward, it is what it is: an absolutely amazing inflection point of purposeless and ineptitude that overtakes so many mouths and fingers.”
The first banished words list was released in 1976 by LSSU, in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, “as a safeguard against misuse, overuse, and uselessness of the English language.”
The university said it fielded more than 1,500 nominations for this year’s list.
“Words and terms matter. Or at least they should,” said Peter Szatmary, the university’s executive director of marketing and communications.