35th Annual List of Words That Should be Banned.

by nate on Friday, January 1st, 2010 | Design, News, Science, Tech/Gadget

If you recently tweeted about how you were chillaxin for the holiday, take note: Fifteen particularly over- or mis-used words and phrases have been declared “shovel-ready” to be “unfriended” by a U.S. university’s annual list of terms that deserve to be banned.

After thousands of nominations of words and phrases commonly used in marketing, media, technology and elsewhere, wordsmiths at Lake Superior State University on Thursday issued their 35th annual list of words that they believe should be banned.

Ripe for exile is “sexting,” shorthand for sexy text messaging, a habit that has caused trouble this year for public figures from politicians to star athletes.

Similarly, list makers showed distaste for tweeting, retweeting and tweetaholics, lingo made popular by users of the popular Twitter networking website. And don’t even get them started on the use of friend as a verb, as in: “He made me mad so I unfriended him on Facebook,” an Internet social site.

One list contributor wanted to know if there was an “app,” short-hand for “application” popularized by the mobile iPhone’s growing array of software tools, for making that annoying word go away.

Male acquaintances need to find another word than “bromance” for their friendships, and the combination of “chillin” and “relaxin’” into “chillaxin” was an easy pick for banishment.

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