The Most Annoying Word or Phrase Is…

It’s that time of year again, when we find out what words/phrases get on everybody’s nerves the most, along with the words that online dictionaries say rose to the top of the search hierarchy.

The big reveal from the annual the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, a.k.a. the Marist Poll, is that the most annoying word or phrase for 2021 is/are “Trump” and “coronavirus,” according to its changed methodology.

Something seems odd, however, in that the organization uncharacteristically did not release any survey data, and last year, Marist surveyed about three times as many persons

In support of its findings, Marist posted only a one paragraph explanation (see below), along with a word cloud containing other selected annoying words or phrases that includes “Biden,” “critical race theory,” “vaccine,” “you know,” “it is what it is,” and the perennial “whatever.”

For the first time in more than a decade, whatever is not the most annoying word or phrase used in conversation! Trump and coronavirus now top the list. In contrast with previous years when respondents received a closed-ended question (with a set amount of response options provided), the Marist Poll posed an open-ended question which allowed respondents to provide answers in their own words. The result? Nearly 600 adults nationally weighed in, and Trump and coronavirus were mentioned the most. Check out our word cloud to see the other answers offered.

[Note: Keep reading for the words of the year listings]

Banished Words List

On December 31, Michigan’s Lake Superior State University released its annual list of words/phrases that theoretically/satirically should be banished from the English language, as the institution explains:

If you’re going to turn to the vernacular to make yourself known, be sure you’re accurate and concise. Avoid error in and exploitation of everyday language. In short, do the opposite of what the public and the media did this year. The irked and the amused from around the country and across the world sent that mock-serious message in their entries for Lake Superior State University’s annual tongue-in-cheek Banished Words List. LSSU announces the results of the yearly compendium on Dec. 31 to start the New Year on the right foot, er, tongue….LSSU has compiled an annual Banished Words List since 1976 to uphold, protect, and support excellence in language by encouraging avoidance of words and terms that are overworked, redundant, oxymoronic, clichéd, illogical, nonsensical—and otherwise ineffective, baffling, or irritating. 

Here is the LSSU list (some of which appears elsewhere in this post):

  • Wait, what?
  • No worries
  • At the end of the day
  • That being said
  • Asking for a friend
  • Circle back
  • Deep dive
  • New normal
  • You’re on mute
  • Supply chain

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s grammarian columnist at year’s end, here are nine words to avoid like, well, the proverbial plague:

  • post-pandemic
  • avoid it like the plaque
  • now more than ever
  • NFT
  • understood the assignment
  • tell me ___without telling me___
  • you’re on mute
  • woke
  • cancel culture

Additional Words or Slang Not to Live By

Like a comfortable hoodie, certain words/phrases fit a situation and provide a shorthand way to get your message across. They may or may not constitute as annoying words.

However, a lot more of them have entrenched themselves in everyday conversation and the lexicon as cliches or fillers. Some even have outlived their “shelf life” and “sell-by-date,” although your conversational mileage may vary.

In no particular order, here are some additional banishment candidates — and there’s a lot of them — that this blog has collected.

Remember though, your mileage may vary.

  • abundance of caution
  • circle back
  • booster
  • fully vaccinated (but see words of the year below)
  • Stay safe (a phrase that has become nearly devoid of all meaning)
  • merch (as in merchandise)
  • honestly, to be honest, to be honest with you, to tell you the truth, or any of its derivations [a big red flag; usually subtext for just the opposite–sometimes referred to as a perception qualifier]
  • I’m not gonna lie [another tell]
  • Let me be clear, let’s be clear, or clearly [usually means the opposite]
  • in fairness/to be fair
  • national treasure [usually a fawning way of describing some overrated pundit]
  • you’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts
  • community or tribe [when discussing consumers who purchase a particular product]
  • so [when used as the first word of a sentence–often incessantly used by entrepreneurs who appear on the Shark Tank TV show]
  • literally [which is typically vocalized when the speaker actually means “figuratively”]
  • wrong side of history
  • winning/breaking the Internet
  • pump the brakes
  • it is what it is
  • at the end of the day
  • there is no there there
  • epic
  • singing Kumbaya
  • influencer [as in social media influencer]
  • thought leader
  • absolutely [instead of a simple “yes”]
  • disruptive [a positive in the context of start-up-venture hype]
  • no problem [instead of saying “you’re welcome”]
  • I mean [dropped repeatedly at the beginning of a sentence]
  • thank you [instead of an expression of gratitude, it’s used when signifying agreement with what the other person has just said]
  • first-time caller/long-time listener or thank you for taking my call [on talk radio]
  • it’s all good
  • my bad
  • my truth/your truth/my journey
  • conflate
  • pivot
  • check all the boxes
  • snowflake
  • microaggression
  • safe space
  • transparency
  • I get it — I gotcha
  • binary choice
  • basically
  • amazing
  • totally
  • awesome
  • awesomesauce
  • throwing someone under the bus
  • having someone’s back
  • you know what I’m saying (usually framed as a question)
  • I don’t have a dog in this fight
  • that dog don’t hunt
  • the gift that keeps on giving
  • skin in the game
  • comfortable in their own skin
  • step up my/your/his/her game
  • game on
  • bring it
  • how ya doin’?
  • you know
  • like
  • Google it
  • that’s a great question
  • actually
  • adulting/adult supervision
  • lean in
  • no pressure
  • my go-to

Pressing the Reset Button on These Words

Here is the other side of the coin also from a Michigan educational institution. Wayne State University’s annual Word Warriors initiative that assembles a list of words “especially worthy of retrieval from the linguistic cellar.”

All year long, Wayne State take suggestions from the general public, as well as its from administrators of its Word Warriors website, for long-forgotten words worthy of resurrecting.

The 2021 top-ten list in Word Warriors’ 12th year (get your dictionary ready) is as follows:

  • Anagapesis
  • Blatteroon 
  • Brontide
  • Dysania
  • Footle
  • Maleolent 
  • Paralian
  • Snollygoster
  • Sophronize
  • Ultracrepidarian

2021 Dictionary Words of the Year

Various online dictionaries announce their often politically charged words of the year at year-end. [Note: This blog is following the same order as last year’s post, with some additions.]

Following on to 2020’s selection of “pandemic,” Merriam-Webster announced that “vaccine” is its 2021 word of the year.

The organization also revised its definition (the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stealth-edited its definition as well).

“The use of a vaccine that triggers an immune response in an entirely new way required that Merriam-Webster revise and expand its entry for the word, which the company did in May,” the organization explained.

“Vaccine comes from the Latin word for “cow,” vacca, because the term was initially used to refer to inoculation using doses of cowpox that, it was discovered, protect humans against smallpox…The word vaccine was about much more than medicine in 2021. For many, the word symbolized a possible return to the lives we led before the pandemic. But it was also at the center of debates about personal choice, political affiliation, professional regulations, school safety, healthcare inequality, and so much more,” the online dictionary explained.

According to the Associated Press, “[Merriam-Webster] added to its online entry for ‘vaccine’ to cover all the talk of mRNA vaccines, or messenger vaccines such as those for COVID-19 developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.”

Earlier this year, Merriam-Webster created controversy in some quarters when it modified the definition of anti-vaxxer by replacing the word laws with regulations in the previous definition that read “a person who opposes vaccination or laws that mandate vaccination.”

“The reason for the change from ‘laws’ to ‘regulations’ is that overwhelming citational evidence shows that this term is used regarding vaccine policies for school districts, restaurants, concert venues, and bars, and that many of these policies are not laws,” a Merriam-Webster editor told the Associated Press.

The following were runners up:

  • Insurrection
  • Perseverance (see Cambridge below)
  • Woke
  • Nomad
  • Infrastructure
  • Cicada
  • Murraya
  • Cisgender
  • Guardian
  • Meta

In somewhat of a departure, Dictionary.com chose “allyship” as its 2021 word of the year (“pandemic” was its choice last year).

As part of a long exposition about the selection, it defines the noun as “the status or role of a person who advocates and actively works for the inclusion of a marginalized or politicized group in all areas of society, not as a member of that group but in solidarity with its struggle and point of view and under its leadership.”

As an indication of the trajectory, Dictionary.com noted that “Other words in our Word of the Year shortlist include critical race theory, burnout, and vaccine, all of which speak to important aspects of 2021 in their own distinct ways,” and that it “continued updating our dictionary to better document and describe the changing language of identity and justice in society.”

Oxford Dictionary lexicographers chose “vax” as their word of the year (last year, they punted because no one word could sum up 2020).

“Whether you are vaxxed, double-vaxxed, or unvaxxed, the language relating to vaccines and vaccination permeated all of our lives in 2021. For lexicographers, it is rare to observe a single topic impact language so dramatically, and in such a short period of time become a critical part of our everyday communication,” Oxford explained in its 33-page report.

“Many of the most significant increases in word frequency this year have been in vaccine-related vocabulary. The word vaccine itself, already very common, more than doubled in frequency between September 2020 and September 2021 in our corpus; even more pronounced was the increase in usage of vaccinate and vaccination over the same period (a 34-fold increase and an 18-fold increase respectively), as the focus moved from the development of vaccines to the process of getting vaccinated.”

It looks like the BBC did not make a “words of the year” video this year.

Elsewhere in the U.K., the Cambridge Dictionary (an entity this blog has not previously covered) chose “perseverance,” Watch:

The Collins Dictionary (another entity new to this blog this time) chose “non-fungible token (NFT), with double-vaxxed, hybridworking, pingdemic, climate anxiety, neopronoun, regencycore, and cheugy making its shortlist.

With a political narrative seemingly foremost in mind for this and various other organizations compiling these lists, the American Dialect Society — based on about 300 votes — selected “insurrection” as its 32th annual word of the year on January 7 as part of its annual meeting held via Zoom rather than in-person which is normally the case.

Down with Uptalk

Uptalk or upspeak — an insufferable phenomenon that linguists often describe more formally as high-rising terminal — continues to metaphorically spread like a virus or a virus variant.

You’ve heard it all over television, and from there it has seeped into day-to-day life. This is the tendency for a speaker to end a declarative sentence as if it is a question. In other words, uptalk is a habit of finishing statement with an interrogative tone, if not an invisible question mark. Somehow this has become cool.

If you ever watched the Australian version of Shark Tank, for one example, it seems that practically every entrepreneur ends each sentence of their investment pitch with a rising intonation. Uptalk is rampant in the U.S. too, of course.

Uptalk makes the speaker appear uncertain, indecisive, or equivocal about even the most trivial of matters. It also seems to make the speaker sound like he or she is desperate for affirmation from the listener.

Ex-CBS journalist Connie Chung reported on uptalk way back in 1994.

Here is a much newer video (one of many), circa September 2021, about how to minimize uptalk (a worthy new year’s resolution) from linguist Mary Daphne:

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