The 2011 List of Banned Words and Phrases

Happy New Year, everyone!

As per tradition with the turning of the calendar, at the start of every year the students of Lake Superior State University in upstate Michigan reveals their annual "List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Over-use, and General Uselessness". This year marks the 36th renewal of the tradition.

A couple of the words and phrases that made this year's list were the Sarah Palin-created word "refudiate" and her go-to phrase "Mama Grizzlies". Most of the words on this year's list are terms often used online by people who fail to properly socialize offline. It does seem that this year's list was more targeted towards the social networking and search engine sites such as Facebook and Google (BTW, those two made the list), whereas in the past the majority of the words were political and/or economical in nature. Doesn't look like the case for this year's list.

So without further ado, here's the 2011 List of Banned Words and Phrases:

Viral
Epic
Fail (and I assume that the phrase "epic fail" by default is considered banned)
Wow Factor
A-Ha Moment
Back Story
BFF
Man Up
refudiate
Mama Grizzlies
The American People
I'm just sayin'
Facebook/Google as verbs
Live Life to the Fullest

Unfortunately my dream of seeing the phrase "license rescue" make the banned list will continue to be a dream...