20070104 Lake Superior St U Seeks to Banish Certain Words

Lake Superior St U Seeks to Banish Certain Words

January 4, 2007

Every year - - for quite a number of years, I have looked forward to this annual pronouncement of the latest in mangled words in the English language.

Oh, to be sure, I am a firm believer that English is very organic, but some its new permutations are simply malignant mutations.

This year I found the annual linguistic analysis in an Associated Press article on the Fox News web site.

In the following article, my “Dr. Pepper” moment was "the chewable vitamin morphine of marketing."

You’ll find it below in describing: “Take ‘ask your doctor,’ the mantra of pharmaceutical commercials. The university called it ‘the chewable vitamin morphine of marketing.’ ”

Portions of the article follows.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,240484,00.html

Bye-Bye 'Brangelina:' Lake Superior State University Seeks to Banish Certain Words

Monday, January 01, 2007 Associated Press

DETROIT — […]

Lake Superior State University on Sunday released its annual "List of Words and Phrases Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness."

The Sault Ste. Marie school in the Upper Peninsula has been compiling the list since 1976 to attract publicity. A total of 16 words or phrases were selected by a university committee from more than 4,500 nominations.

The list reads like a lexicon of popular culture.

Take "ask your doctor," the mantra of pharmaceutical commercials. The university called it "the chewable vitamin morphine of marketing."

Critics piled on the media's practice of combined celebrity names such as "TomKat" or "Brangelina." One said, "It's so annoying, idiotic and so lame and pathetic that it's 'lamethetic.'"

Real estate listings were targeted for overuse of "boast." As in "master bedroom boasts his-and-her fireplaces — never 'bathroom apologizes for cracked linoleum,'" quipped Morris Conklin of Portugal.

[…]

The university's word watchers had no use for "truthiness," the word popularized by Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert. It was selected as the word that best summed up 2006 in an online survey by dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster.

[…]

Read the entire article, as it appeared on the Fox News web site, here.

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