Epic Viral Fail -- The Official Banished Words List
Thanks once again to the intrepid folks at Lake Superior State University, this year's "Official Banished Words List" has now gone viral. Whoops! I guess we're going to have to rewrite that sentence, since "viral" was on the top of the list of words and phrases that have just become so annoying that -- for the good of the language (and, of course The American People) -- the only possible reaction is to banish them completely from our lexicon.
Number two on the list is "epic," which has caused us to forego our normal introductory quote from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song Of Hiawatha -- since to do so would only be confusing this year. This is due to the fact that Song Of Hiawatha is -- in the traditional sense of the term -- indeed an epic poem. Hence the confusion, and hence our avoidance of said confusion by omitting to provide a Hiawatha quote this year (even if the Lake Superior State University does tantalizingly sit "on the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining Big-Sea-Water").
Enough of this frippery, though. Let's move right on to the (as it is officially known) "Lake Superior State University's 36th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness."
Viral
Epic
Fail (used as noun)
Wow factor
A-Ha Moment
Back Story
BFF (i.e., "best friends forever")
Man Up
Refudiate
Mama Grizzlies
The American People
I'm Just Sayin'
Facebook / Google (used as verbs)
Live Life To The Fullest
As usual, the L.S.S.U. announcement is worth reading in its entirety, mostly for the amusing comments from people nominating the phrases. Here are a choice few of these:
[Fail] -- "Fail is not a noun. It is not an adjective. It is a verb. If this word is not banned, then this entire word banishment system is full of FAIL. (Now doesn't that just sound silly?)"
[BFF] -- "These chicks call each other BFF (Best Friends Forever) and it lasts about 10 minutes. Now there's BFFA (Best Friends For Awhile), which makes more sense."
[Man Up] -- "Another case of 'verbing' a noun and ending with a preposition that goes nowhere. Not only that, the phrase is insulting, especially when voiced by a female, who'd never think to say, 'Woman up!'"
[Refudiate] -- "Adding this word to the English language simply because a part-time politician lacks a spell checker on her cell phone is an action that needs to be repudiated."
My personal favorite of the bunch:
[Epic] -- "Standards for using 'epic' are so low, even 'awesome' is embarrassed."
Heh. Nicely done.
As is traditional here (to provide the back story), we like to introduce our own "wow factor" into the proceedings, to provide the context of an "a-ha!" moment to the list. The American People (or at least all of our BBFs out there) have come to simply expect us to man up in such fashion every year. If you don't believe me, you can always Google it. As always, we hope that this will not be seen as an epic fail, but rather will go viral overnight. In either case, we certainly hope all our readers had a wonderful and happy new year, and will live life to the fullest in 2011! It's certainly shaping up to be an epic year of refudiatin' all the Mama Grizzlies out there, as the next presidential campaign revs up.
I'm just sayin'.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
"Viral" is overused, but sound. We're all familiar with the spread of viruses, both biological and electronic. It's a useful metaphor for the spread of some forms of information.
--
"Ah-ha moment" has that first h in it. Otherwise it's a mere ha moment, introduced by an indefinite article. I normally prefer the word "epiphany", but if I were talking about them at length I would be glad to have the synonym just for variety.
--
I've always understood "back story" as referring to details of lesser narrative importance, which may be chronologically before the main story but don't have to be. Definitions on Wikipedia, wisegeek.com, dictionary.com, and Merriam-Webster specify chronological priority with no suggestion of lesser narrative significance. The term is apparently too recent to be included in my copy of the OED.
I think I'm right and they're wrong. Look at some prominent instances:
"We show you the story behind the story, revealing a side of news that is rarely seen. ... We hear how correspondents deal with the challenges and human emotions they confront." http://www.cnn.com/CNNI/Programs/backstory/
"Backstory
From around the nation and around the world, Times reporters go beyond the headlines, providing in-depth detail and analysis on the top news stories of the day." http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/podcasts/backstory.xml
"Backstory: inside the business of news" (a book title)
The business of news has been going on for well over a century. To fit the overt definitions of "back story" as being chronologically before, the back story would have to only be stuff like what happened to James Gordon Benett in 1830, before he started the New York Herald. Anything since then is additional detail of what happened after the business of news was already underway, and so couldn't be included. Of course, that's silly.
Even when sources define backstory as being before the events of the story, they undermine that thesis. For example, wisegeek says "Backstory is the foundation upon which a writer knows his or her character as intimately as you might know your child, lifelong friend, or spouse." That can't reasonably be expected to come screeching to an absolute halt at the moment of the first event that gets included in the published story.
Sure, lots of the "in-depth detail and analysis" will be of events before the main story. But not all. So even for details that are earlier, the chronological priority isn't the distinguishing feature.
--
"BFF" sounds ironic to me.
--
"Man up" isn't a phrase I expect to use, ever. The appeal to gender bias should be avoided. But as for picking a fight with it on grounds of "don't verb nouns" and the idea that prepositions should never be used as particles, I'm not on board.
"To avoid confusing prepositions with particles, test by moving the word (up) and words following it to the front of the sentence: Up the bank four armed men held.
"If the resulting sentence does not make sense, then the word belongs with the verb and is a particle, not a preposition.
"Note the difference:
Example A: We ran up the hill.
Test: Up the hill we ran.
"The resulting sentence makes sense. Therefore, up is a preposition."
http://www.towson.edu/ows/prepositions.htm
Particles are perfectly ok, whether it's in "man up" or "hold up".
--
"Refudiate" adds no value that I can see, but only encourages confusion.
--
"Mama Grizzlies": It's getting more attention than it deserves, but will inveighing against it really decrease that amount? Ignore it, who cares?
--
"Google" is a verb. Get over it. "Look up on the search engine of your choice" is bulky, pompous, and just plain stupid.
--
Living life to the fullest means embracing the suffering as well as the enjoyment. They come as a package deal. The trite, overused phrase is indeed trite and overused, but at least it implicitly acknowledges this important truth. The proposed replacement utterly fails to do so.
--
"Standards for using 'epic' are so low, even 'awesome' is embarrassed."
Perfect. I have nothing more to add.
dsws -
Grammatical nitpickery! I can't resist...
Heh.
I'm willing to give "viral" another year, as it is only mildly annoying now (but, once it truly "goes viral" it will be worse, of course).
I would have spelled it "an Aha moment" or even "an Aha! moment" (I probably would capitalize Moment as well, and likely would put the whole phrase in quotes, hence "an 'Aha! Moment'"). But, in this case, I had to defer to the LSSU list's syntax. In their defense, they did include a hyphen, so it's not just a "ha" moment...
Back story doesn't annoy me much, and I even occasionally use it. I've always taken it to mean "the historical background of the story, which has seldom been told." In other words, the key thing to me is that not many people know about it. I'd use it almost as akin to "the secret history," although not quite as strong.
I don't hang out with the younger set much, so I don't hear "BFF" much, myself. I liked the "BFFA" suggestion, though.
Your man up example makes perfect grammatical sense. If you're Yoda, that is. Heh. Reminds me of the classic example for people learning English from languages where word position is even more flexible: "house cat" is not the same thing as "cat house." Heh.
I'm willing to bet that Mama Grizzlies (the phrase) will be as hard to ignore next year as Sarah Palin herself. But maybe that's just me...
Google may eventually fight the verbization of their company name, because once you become a common word, you lose your trademark. "Aspirin," for instance, used to be a trademark. Companies who currently fight this as hard as they can: "Kleenex" (officially "Kleenex brand tissue"), "Band Aid," and (to use a verb example) "Xerox." Once a judge rules that the product name is now a common noun, the company loses all control over it. The most recent to have lost this (in a truly stupid judicial decision), in my memory, was "Monopoly" as a board game. This is why zillions of "Something-opoly" games abound on the market today -- because it is no longer a trademark.
And yeah, that "awesome" quote was, indeed, epic.
-CW
When I see BFF, I think of the acronym BUFF...
Which is NOTHING like it appears to be... :D
"Standards for using 'epic' are so low, even 'awesome' is embarrassed."
I have to second (third??) my enjoyment of this. It really cracked me up.. :D
Michale....
"Furthertheless is NOT a word. Stop using it!"
-Charlie Sheen, SPIN CITY
:D
Michale.....
Like Yoda I talk? Like h*** I do.
Couldn't resist.
The principle isn't that arbitrary rearrangements are allowed, only that there are two specific places a prepositional phrase can go (even though one is much more common than the other. "Up the riverbank they ran" does sound a little stilted, but nothing like "up the First National Bank they held".
"I think of the acronym BUFF."
Boston Underground Film Festival?
Boston Underground Film Festival?
Close....
Big Ugly Fat F*cker
AKA B-52 Bomber
:D
Michale.....