Ask the English Teacher

The Word of the Year

Here's an interesting story from the Globe and Mail: Dialect society selects Word of the Year. Excerpt:

Pluto is finally getting some respect — from wordsmiths.

“Plutoed” was chosen 2006 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society at its annual meeting.

To “pluto” is “to demote or devalue someone or something” much like what happened to the former planet last year when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto did not meet its definition of a planet.

“Our members believe the great emotional reaction of the public to the demotion of Pluto shows the importance of Pluto as a name,” said society President Cleveland Evans. “We may no longer believe in the Roman god Pluto, but we still have a sense of personal connection with the former planet.”

“Plutoed” won in a runoff against “climate canary,” defined as “an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe on the horizon.”

Other words in the running: murse (man's purse), flog (a fake blog that promotes products) and macaca (an American citizen treated as an alien).

Former Senator George Allen, a Republican who sought re-election last year, was comfortably ahead in polls until August, when he referred to the son of Indian immigrants as macaca, regarded by some as a racial slur. Mr. Allen lost to Democrat Jim Webb.

I don't know how many of such terms will last another year, but it's fun to see how new words pop up and spread around the world.

Banished Words of 2007

Every January, Lake Superior State University in Michigan publishes its Banished Words List.

I see that this year's list includes "gone/went missing," which has provoked a lot of visitors here. But in a radio interview this morning, I heard the interviewee use the term at least six times.

While usage by enough people can make a word perfectly all right, I still dislike some common expressions:

"No problem" for "You're welcome" (It makes me think I could have been a problem.)
"PER-fect!" (When all I did was order something or give the clerk enough money to pay for it.)
"How are you?" "I'm good/great!" (I asked about your health, not your moral qualities.)
"That begs the question..." (No, it raises the question; begging the question is a failure in logic.)
"Go forward" (Politicians seem unable to frame a sentence without saying "as we go forward.")

What are the English terms that bother you?