Words such as “bail-out” are already prematurely geriatric through thundering over-use, and only apply to banks and companies whose stupidity and greed caused the initial problem.
“Staycation”, which has a certain witty appeal, describes the new trend for taking holidays in your home country at holiday time. However, the list declares that this word “suffers for enshrining both green and economic concerns” which are already jangling people’s nerves.
As for myself, I would definitely ban “challenge” in its current political and corporate usage, as in “the commercial environment is particularly challenging”. As someone said to me, this is empty spin to say the shops are empty as everyone is broke.
Most corporate speak is odious in the desperate effort to “talk things up”, but instead usually achieve a creepy Orwellian ambience. For example, when and why did personnel departments become human resources?
The life of “credit crunch” is also fast reaching its end, although I have heard the spin-off “crunchy” used to describe what I think was formerly called grungy, as in “what a crunchy dress”.
The BBC and all television companies should be banned from using the word “edgy” to justify infantile humour that most people find unfunny or insulting.
I don’t believe in capital punishment, but my patience is sorely tried by language abuses such as using words such as “action”, “task” or “impact” as verbs.
Still, I am going to take a break here to action making a cup of tea to impact on my taste buds. Oops, see how catching it is.
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