The Most Annoying Word or Phrase Is…and Words of the Year

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 of the year, i.e., those 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 2022 is “woke” according to a phone survey of about U.S. 1,300 adults.

Marist explains:

[T]he winner or loser is woke. In fact, more than one in three Americans (35%) think woke is the most irritating word used in conversation. Whatever receives 22% followed by the phrase, it is what it is, with 15%. Twelve percent are displeased by like. You know (9%) and just kidding (7%) receive single digits.

The perennial “whatever” was dethroned for the second consecutive year.

Banished Words List

On a similar theme, and usually on December 31, Michigan’s Lake Superior State University releases its annual tongue-in-cheek list of words/phrases that theoretically/satirically should be banished from the English language in the new year.

Derived from 1,500-plus nominations, here is the LSSU list:

  1. GOAT [greatest of all time]
  2. Inflection point
  3. Quiet quitting
  4. Gaslighting (see below)
  5. Moving forward
  6. Amazing
  7. Does that make sense?
  8. Irregardless
  9. Absolutely
  10. It is what it is

“Stop resorting to imprecise, trite, and meaningless words and terms of seeming convenience! You’re taking the lazy way out and only confusing matters by over-relying on inexact, stale, and inane communication!,” LSSU opined. “LSSU has compiled an annual Banished Words List since 1976, and later copyrighted the concept, 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.”

In the context of woke, Stanford University actually published a guide for eliminating what it considers harmful language.

Words “You Love to Hate,” Allegedly

Merriam-Webster published this list of what it considers the favorite pet peeves of many people.

  • Literally
  • Incentivize
  • Like
  • Irregardless
  • Conversate
  • Impact & Impactful
  • Sentence Initial And
  • Comprise
  • Firstly
  • Espresso & Expresso
  • Author (as a verb)
  • OMG
  • Awesome
  • Enormity
  • Unique
  • Uninterested & Disinterested
  • Fewer & Less
  • Decimate
  • Anyways
  • Commentate

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.

Click here for a list of potential banishment candidates

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” or obsolescence.

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 2022 top-ten list in Word Warriors’ 13th year (get your dictionary ready) is as follows:

  • Cacoethes
  • Collywobbles
  • Desiderata
  • Elflock
  • Foozle
  • Fudgel
  • Grandiloquent
  • Malapert
  • Otiose
  • Scurryfunge 

2022 Dictionary Words of the Year

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, gaslighting is the word of the year. “2022 saw a 1740% increase in lookups for gaslighting, with high interest throughout the year…In recent years, with the vast increase in channels and technologies used to mislead, gaslighting has become the favored word for the perception of deception. This is why (trust us!) it has earned its place as our Word of the Year,” its editors noted.

From 300,000 votes from English speakers, Oxford Languages announced that “goblin mode” is its 2022 word of the year. “Metaverse” came in second, and the hashtag #IStandWith finished in third place.

The slang term goblin mode is “a type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”

Based on a 1,400 percent increase in searches, Dictionary.com chose “woman” as its 2022 word of the year.

“Homer” is the prestiguous Cambridge Dictionary’s unusual 2022 word of the year.

“The word  homer  saw a huge spike in searches on the Cambridge Dictionary website in 2022, with over 65,000 searches occurring in a single day. This significant surge of searches occurred on May 5, when homer was the winning word on the popular online word game Wordle,” its website revealed.

The Cambridge Dictionary recently expanded its definition of the word woman.

According to the Collins Dictionary, “Permacrisis” is its word of the year, “a term that describes ‘an extended period of instability and insecurity.”

The organization added that “It is one of several words Collins highlights that relate to ongoing crises the UK and the world have faced and continue to face, including political instability, the war in Ukraine, climate change, and the cost-of-living crisis.”

With a political narrative usually foremost in mind (which often also applies to other organizations compiling these lists), the American Dialect Society intends to announce its word of the year on January 6, 2023, at its annual meeting.

Check back for the results.

Added: In a departure from vocabulary with explicit political overtones, about 200 attendees at the American Dialect Society event selected usssy as its 2022 word of the year.

WSJ columnist Ben Zimmer, the chair of the ADS Words Committee, explained:

The selection of the suffix -ussy highlights how creativity in new word formation has been embraced online in venues like TikTok,..The playful suffix builds off the word pussy to generate new slang terms. The process has been so productive lately on social media sites and elsewhere that it has been dubbed
-ussification.

Down with Uptalk

At this time of year, this blog again renews its call for an end to the very annoying uptalk vocal intonation.

Succinctly defined by Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, uptalk (sometimes called upspeak) is “a way of speaking in which the voice rises at the end of a statement, making it sound like a question.”

Click here for more information about this insufferable verbal phenomenon.

Circling Back to Gaslighting

When it comes to gaslighting, you have to give Democrats credit for the clever way they manipulate language for political clout.

Parenthetically, a gaslighting effort appears to be underway on the left and the right (including in Murdoch-owned news outlets) to undermine the viability of former President Trump, like him or not, as a 2024 candidate, while downplaying or ignoring the decisiveness of ballot harvesting in the 2022 midterm elections.

As the #TwitterFiles (among other developments) have demonstrated, Big Tech and corporate media collusion with them — raising First Amendment, free speech implications — to advance an agenda is a whole other, but related, matter.

The organized or institutional left has become well known for projection, and that is not merely limited to gaslighters accusing their ideological opponents of gaslighting. Same with applying the term astroturf or lamenting bots on social media platforms.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson previously described what some might perhaps consider Orwellian doublespeak as an inversion of language or the mirror image of what is actually happening.

For one thing, liberals abruptly and selectively abandoned the my body, my choice mantra when it come to demanding individuals agreeing to receive an injection of a substance that is still only in distribution on an emergency authorization.

And they also veered away from the “a private company can do what it wants” philosophy when Elon Musk gained ownership of Twitter.

There are many other examples of gaslighting, including the following:

  • Election deniers smear others as denying elections.
  • Censors complain about censorship.
  • Self-styled democracy protectors who resort to demagoguery to de-stablize or destroy democracy.
  • Misinformers complain about misinformation.
  • Authoritarians lament authoritarianism.
  • Victimizers and those with privilege position themselves as victims or marginalized.
  • Inclusion, in practice, often results in exclusion, and diversity typically translates into conformity.
  • Safe-space advocates engage in bullying.
  • Those preaching tolerance can epitomize intolerance.
  • Violent acts are described as mostly peaceful protests and vice versa. Silence or even free speech can be characterized as violence.
  • Anti-racists promote bigotry.

As Carlson once opined, “There’s always an inverse relationship between the slogan and the reality, so the more they tell you ‘trust the science,’ the more they become intent on for you to ignore the science.”

A quote attributed to George Orwell maintains that “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

But Wait, There’s More

From a poll of 4,500 respondents, here is a list of the of the most irritating office jargon, via CV Maker, ranked from first (Synergy) to 15th:

  • Synergy 

  • Outside the box 

  • Take ownership 

  • Value-added 

  • Circle back 

  • Reach out 

  • Going forward 

  • Proactive 

  • Takeaway 

  • Make it happen 

  • Thought leadership

  • Onboarding 

  • Transparency  

  • Mission critical 

  • Scalable