Thursday, January 03, 2008

Don't use these words?

Lake Superior State University hit on an innovative way to get the word out: They proclaimed a Banished Words List.

Here are some banned for overuse or simply muddy thinking:
Organic, Random, Surge, Authored.... and a list of others from the silly to the absurd.

But I question some of the choices:
Decimate originally meant to reduce by 1/10th, but today it is understood to mean mass destruction. Words and their meanings evolve.
Webinar is a useful and popular term for an online seminar. It's no worse than such portmanteaus as motel, smog and brunch. Maybe we should do away with the word "blog"?
Wordsmith is widely used to mean a word maven... or a writer who works in words the way other artists work in oils or clay. You can call me a wordsmith if you like. I won't be insulted!

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