2023

Lake Superior State University has released its annual list of banned words and terms and 'greatest of all time' takes top prize.

Banished in 2008 for overuse, misuse, and uselessness: “pointless,” “cop-out,” “Only Yogi Berra should be allowed to utter such a circumlocution.” Its resurgence prompted these insights: “Well, duh.” “No kidding.” “Of course it is what it is! But our nominators insisted, and our Arts and Letters faculty judges concurred, that to decree the Banished Words List 2023 as the GOAT is tantamount to gaslighting. “Irregardless, moving forward, it is what it is: an absolutely amazing inflection point of purposeless and ineptitude that overtakes so many mouths and fingers.” “Sounds like it comes with a guarantee when that may not be the case,” cautioned a wary watchdog. “Inflection point has reached its saturation point and point of departure,” proclaimed another. One conveyed that the prefix “ir” + “regardless” = redundancy. “Not everything is amazing; and when you think about it, very little is,” a dissenter explained. It’s too obscure of a reference to begin with, avowed sundry critics, alluding to the 1938 play and 1940/44 movies. Over the decades, Lake State has received tens of thousands of nominations for the list, which now totals more than 1,000 entries. 1 as the best of the worst: GOAT, acronym for Greatest of All Time. “The nine additional words and terms banished for 2023—from new no-nos ‘inflection point’ at No. The many nominators didn’t have to be physicists or grammarians to determine the literal impossibility and technical vagueness of this wannabe superlative.