Justifiable Verbicide

Every year, Lake Superior State University, in Northern Michigan, issues a list of words that should be banned from the Queen's English for misuse, overuse and general uselessness that has appeared annually each New Year's Day and is an annual event because new linguistic weeds keep on cropping up in everyday usage. People from around the world are encouraged to nominate or expressions that offend them, such as "you know," "whatever," "at this point in time," and "have a nice day," that the nominator feels should be purged from the language.

This, of course, is mostly tongue-in-cheek.  However, some of the 2012 winners should be taken seriously:  "baby bump" is one of those.  It is considered a matter of delicacy to refer to a particular woman's pregnancy; especially if it turns out that said pregnancy is unplanned or that the woman is not pregnant!  To blatantly refer to someone's baby bump is too stark and intrusive, for me.

And, for God's sake; have some more respect for guys' rooms than to refer to them as "man caves"!  Or at least employ a parallel usage, woman caves."  There, our inner Neanderthals can carve up and dine on saber-toothed tigers.

Here's the current list:

http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php

And here are previous year's lists:

http://www.lssu.edu/banished/archived_lists.php

Naturally, you surely have your own words you would like to see expunged.  You can nominate them by using this form:

http://www.lssu.edu/banished/submit_word.php

I must confess some ambivalence with regard to the outright banning of words or expressions.  Some are extremely annoying, and need not to be used, especially the over-used ones.  Some convey no additional content, and serve just as filler words:  "you know," "just sayin'."   I guess I feel the same about specifics of banning words like I do about capital punishment: slightly against it, but glad when it's used on a real scoundrel!

I think that many jurors would support a defense of justifiable verbicide in the case of some of these expressions.

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