Plymouth Magazine-Summer24-DIGITAL - Flipbook - Page 9
Banished Words
By Karna Converse
I like to walk.
If I meet you on the trail, there’s a good
chance I’m catching up on several days’
worth of podcasts.
If I’m listening to podcasts, I might be
talking to myself.
And if I’m talking to myself, you can bet
I’m pronouncing and spelling MerriamWebster’s Word of the Day.
I’m not sure how Merriam-Webster picks
each word of the day, but their choices
are often ones that give me pause. How,
for example, have I used the word assail,
or demagogue, or conjecture? What have
I read or where have I heard the word
hegemony, or exodus, or inalienable? To
be honest, most of their selections don’t
enter my everyday conversations, but I
enjoy the challenge of contemplating if,
and how, they might.
Unfortunately, some of the words I more
frequently find coming out of my mouth
can be found on a list published annually
by Lake Superior State University. The
Banished Words List notes 10 words
deemed to have lost their significance
due to overuse, misuse, or uselessness.
What began as a publicity stunt in
1976 is now a campus tradition and
the university receives thousands of
nominations every year.
This year’s winners include impact, iconic,
and obsessed. Inflection point, moving
forward, and gaslighting were some of last
year’s winning entries. Before that: asking
for a friend, curated, echo chamber, fake
news, no worries, no problem, optics,
segue, thus, viral.
List-makers don’t reveal how they
determine the final 10, but each word
is noted with a reason why. I couldn’t
agree more with the reason behind one
word that has made the list twice—
unprecedented—chosen most recently
“for misuse in describing events that do
have precedent.”
I’m a relatively new grandmother but I
envision a day, in 10 or 15 years, when
a school assignment encourages our
grandchildren to interview my husband
and me about our lives. Not only about
our childhoods, schooling, and careers
but also, and specifically, about those two
often-referred-to-as-unprecedented events
that have occurred during our adult lives:
9/11 and the COVID-19 pandemic.
While I’m sure to acknowledge the
effects both events had on our families
and the lasting impacts they’ve made on
the world, I will also point out how every
generation before us faced unimaginable
challenges and how the new-and-neverbefore often does have precedence. Then,
we’ll transition from words that describe
what happened to words that show what
we did in response.
Check out LSSU’s entire list of
banished words here:
Submit your banished words
suggestion here:
The Banished Word List acknowledges
how the English language evolves and
encourages a mindful approach to its
use. Merriam-Webster identifies words to
consider while undertaking that mindful
approach.
So:
If you’ve made it to the end of these
ramblings, you might be reviewing my
opening lines.
If the cadence of those lines is familiar,
there’s a good chance you’ve read a book
or two by Laura Joffe Numeroff.
And if you’ve been reciting “mouse,
cookie; moose, muffin; or pig, pancake”
you may be also, like me, be thinking
about the words you want to pass on to
future generations.
About the Author
Karna Converse is happiest when juxtaposing ancestral heritage
with worldwide events of the time period and is dedicated to
passing her findings on to the next generation. She and her
husband, Ken, recently retired to Des Moines.
Plymouth Magazine 9
