USATODAY.com - Survey tracks 2005's most annoying phrases

USATODAY.com - Survey tracks 2005's most annoying phrases: "THE ANNOYING LIST

Words Lake Superior State has banished 'for mis-use, over-use and general uselessness':
Surreal
Hunker down
Person of interest
Community of learners
Up-or-down vote
Breaking news
Designer breed
FEMA
First-time caller
Pass the savings on to you!
97% fat-free
An accident that didn't have to happen
Junk science
Git-r-done
Dawg
Talking points
Holiday tree"



I thought this interesting, a list of annoying phrases from 2005. I'm not sure I'm as annoyed with the phrase "person of interest" as the folks at Lake Superior State are. I see it as sort of jargon for saying that police can not say an individual is a suspect, but they need to talk to that person anyway. Breaking news is sort of journalism jargon too. Perhaps that falls into Lake Superior State's category of over-used. And when every story is breaking news, then you have to distinguish it with "late breaking news" or some other distinguishing phrase. I thought putting FEMA on the list deviated from the criteria of a useless word instead says the agency itself was useless. Humor benifit yes. But on the other hand, if an agency changes leadership and works hard, when do they get to live down the reputation tarnish? Lastly I saw their "up or down vote" as more of a political statement rather than one that was linguistic. Or maybe I don't watch enough news. It seems funny to me that most of this comes from journalism rather than from everday speech. Which says something about how the list was compiled.

Please leave a comment tell us what word or phrase would you say is mis-used, over-used, or generally useless?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In The Hours

Image
In The Hours Words by Helen L. Parmelee Music by Kevin Twit http://www.igracemusic.com/hymnbook/lead/inthehours.pdf This song by Indelible Grace is one that really moves me. I think it moves me because it reminds me of my own story. The words remind me of God's work in my life through the blessing of suffering. A lot of my best days walking with my Lord has actually been days of suffering. Verse one reminds me of growing up when I felt rejected by others but God was my song. 1. In the hours of pain and sorrow, When the world brings no relief When the eye is dim and heavy, And the heart oppressed with grief While blessings flee, Savior Lord we trust in Thee! While blessings flee, Savior Lord we trust in Thee! Verse two talks about my drifting from the Lord when I was caught up in pride and the sin of self-sufficiency. 2. When the snares of death surround us, Pride, ambition, love of ease Mammon with her false allurements, Words that flatter, smiles that please Then ere we yield, S...
Read more

Was the New Testament Letters Only Written to Male Brothers?

  Question:   Was the Bible written to men only and not to women?   Some teach that the New Testament letters address brothers exclusively.      Executive Summary Answer:   Women and men share in the blessings of the gospel, Scripture was written for both women and men. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen. 1:27 ESV) Answer:   The Bible recognizes differences between genders but also recognizes the commonality between male and female genders.   The book of Proverbs is written to sons to gain wisdom.   “Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.”   (Prov. 1:8-9 ESV) The book of Proverbs was written in order to teach young men wisdom.   Even so, often it is the female gender that teaches wisdom.   Early in the book, the male gender,...
Read more

Bridging the Chasm

My good friend the Jollyblogger has been writing on Bridging the Chasm , meaning the church communicating with the secular world. In the early 80's YWAM put out a pamphlet on missions prayer. One of the things they encouraged Christians to pray for was different areas of influence: * Government * Business * Media/Journalism * The Arts * Education * Entertainment (I'm not sure that is the complete list.) As I prayed for these areas of influence, I found that Christians really wrote about a couple of these in the early 80's; Government and Business. For government you had movements like the Moral Majority and Focus on the Family writing actually about a very narrow aspect of government; moral issues. Yes, I'm grouping all Focus on the Family's issues in the area of moral issues. The government is so much more than moral issues. The business issues were mostly addressed by Bill Gothard, Larry Burkett and later Ron Blue. I'm not sure how ade...
Read more