The Bastardization of English

I find it fascinating when words from popular culture transcend everyday speech and are officially canonized onto the pages of a reference manual – the most memorable example being “Google” in recent years (I’ll follow the Oxford English Dictionary-acceptable capitalized version).

To my surprise, I read about the reverse today – an academic institution in the U.S. that releases an annual list of words and phrases they wish to ban from the English language. Since 1976, a committee based out of Lake Superior State University sorts through thousands of nominations every year and whittles it down to a handful of words that they believe should disappear from the lexicon all together.

My “favorites”: combined celebrity names (TomKat be gone!), “pwn” (which, until today, I did not know had its genesis in World of Warcraft, though I should have guessed), and “went missing” (from the article: “‘It makes ‘missing’ sound like a place you can visit, such as the Poconos. Is the person missing, or not?’ asked Robin Dennis of Texas.” Too true). I was, however, surprised to see Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness” on the list – perhaps the academics veer to the right?

Full article here.