When the ball drops in Times Square and we say good-bye to 2013, let us also say farewell to some of the worst on- and off-line phrases of the year.
- “-said no one ever:” It’s like the 2013 equivalent of NOT from the 90s. I still feel bad for my parents who had to endure the NOT humor of my middle school years, and for too long, my Twitter stream and even advertisements are full of this “you’re accidentally agreeing with this phrase until I pull this rug out from under you with a SAID NO ONE EVER! PSYCHE! GOTCHA!” How very clever. Not!
- “amazeballs (in all its variations):” I actually thought this word was dead, but it’s clearly a flesh-eating zombie who can only die when we shoot it in the balls. I’m ready.
- “fail:” While it does get a lot across in a short period of time, and I know we are all busy, I feel like we should move on from it. Fail is now a fail, which puts us into a dangerous spiral of faildom.
- “grammar nazi:” I don’t like when “nazi” is thrown around as is, but the whole pride in memorizing 8th grade English and not giving anyone a break if they mix up a posessive pronoun and a contraction once in a while is more annoying than smart. It seems to be more about showing off than encouraging better writing. Maybe Grammar Blowhard would work. Personally, I’d rather be know as a Grammar Nun or Grammar Gently and Privately Mention An Error.
- “cronut:” I’ve never eat one, but I’ve seen so many photos and articles on them this year that I can’t bring myself to attempt to try one when I’m in New York City in 2014.
The one term I refuse to put on this list is #hashtag. These are useful for following events, topics and finding more than the 200 people you already follow on Twitter and Instagram (and maybe Facebook if it ever catches on there). I even like the Sherlock Holmes quality of #tryingtofigureoutlonghashtagsentences. As long as you haven’t named your kid Hashtag, it gets to stay for 2014.
What words and phrase are you kicking out in the new year?
My list is mostly for fun and to get some much needed anger out, but if you want to see more scientific 2013 lists, Global Language Monitoring mined “the Internet, including social media platforms, the blogosphere, and 275,000 print and electronic global media publications,” and the results are in Business Insider’s piece: Most Used Words And Phrases Of 2013.
