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Waterfall Humour

bad WoRds – ReaLLY

By James Clarke

s arah ‘Mamma Bear’ phrases in the 1970s was ‘At

Palin – remember her?
this point in time’. I sense it
- the most naive
vice-presidential might be dying at this point
in time. And the irritating
candidate the desperate use of the word ‘impact’
Americans have come up crept in. It replaced, for
with since Donald Duck! She no good reason, the word
was governor of Alaska and ‘affect’. (“The inflation
I am celebrating, quietly at rate has impacted upon
home, the 12th anniversary job availability”.)
of the day she used the word
‘refudiate’ in an official message. $#0!3l-r34D¥ Twenty five years ago the
The non-word did not expression ‘for sure’ appeared
go viral but it gained some on the banned list. And
amusing currency at the time. ‘wellness’ (silly word) instead of
health. The phrase ‘There you go!’
There! I’ve used three ‘cute’ was raising hackles 20 years back.
expressions (Mamma bear, refudiate
and viral) all of which appear in the Africa. Hopefully, it sank before In 2001 the word ‘diva’ irritated
annual ‘List of Banished Words’. getting across the Atlantic. many. The word had until then been
used to describe operatic stars. But
The list was started in 1975 by the There’s also ‘Facebooking’ newspaper sub-editors suddenly
Lake Superior State University in and ‘Googling’. discovered the word was marvellously
Michigan. The private university BFF is on the list. As Kate Rabe of short and good for use in headlines
invited the public to suggest Fort Collins, Ohio said, “These chicks and it is now used to describe just
words and expressions that call each other BFF (Best Friends about any female pop singer.
deserve to be “banned from the Forever) and it lasts about 10 minutes.
Queen’s English for mis-use, over- Now there’s BFFA (Best Friends For The word ‘fax’ (short for ‘facsimile’) was
use and general uselessness”. Awhile), which makes more sense.” high up on people’s hate list in the
1980s but has now pretty much died
The expression ‘the American People’ There’s also ‘man up’ – “why don’t - along with the facsimile machine.
was among the first to be condemned you man up to the situation?”
(why not just say ‘Americans’?). This can be said to a woman or Meanwhile I have received a
‘Viral’ was also condemned. I to a man. A contributor to the list reader’s letter from ‘Alison M’:
don’t mind the modern meaning commented, “It’s another case of Esteemed Sir,
assigned to viral. In fact it’s gone ‘verbing’ a noun and ending with a As I was conditioning my hair in
viral is a neater way of saying it has preposition that goes nowhere.” the shower I read my shampoo
become universally entrenched. bottle label. I was shocked!
‘Shovel-ready’ (meaning: it’s about The shampoo, which runs down my
I’d like to add to these over-used time it was buried) was nominated last entire body, says “for extra volume
words, ‘iconic’, ‘paradigm shift’ and year. I rather like it. ‘User friendly’ was and body”! I suddenly realised why
that idle exclamation, ‘Awesome!’ beginning to irritate as early as 1984 I have become “full-figured”! And
One annual list included ‘wow but is here to stay - and fair enough. here I was blaming chocolate.
factor’ and ‘a-ha moments’. An ‘a- Tomorrow I am showering with
ha’ moment is when you suddenly I decided to look back over the last dishwashing liquid. The label
understand something. It’s a phrase few years at other words that caused reads: “dissolves fat that is
that did not take root in South public ire. One of the ‘most hated’ otherwise difficult to remove”.

36 Waterfall Issue 10 2020