Most Overused Words & Phrases

Recently a small college in Michigan determined the most overused words and phrases in the English language. Their idea was to have these words banished from the Queen’s English, although it seems unlikely the Queen of England will pay a great deal of attention to Lake Superior State University (the Lakers, of course). Google, Yahoo and a few other internet groups picked up the list and it’s presently making its way around the web. It’s hard to disagree with the choices, which will be examined below, but the list is simply too short. Words should be examined annually by some trustworthy group and if found to be overly trite, rude, insensitive or ubiquitous (O.K., or too long), they should be officially banished. The Queen of England should be part of the ceremony, along with the National Spelling Bee Champion of the United States, and seven randomly picked English teachers from the English speaking world. If the words are deemed losers…BOOM, gone, banished, vanquished, non-ubiquitous (or long).

The Lakers chose:

Occupy: For obvious reasons and yes, it is getting a bit ubiq…uh, overused.

Baby Bump: Totally insensitive but actually better than the British preggers.

 24/7: Yes, thank you for this one. All the time worked so well for so long.

Ginormous: Did we really need to combine giant and enormous? No. Pick one.

Thank you in advance: I actually use this one a lot so let’s skip it.

Amazing: Huh? They are actually dissing amazing? That ranks with cool. Nope.

As Christians we have to be especially careful with our language choices. People are always listening and many are taking cues from us. If we use a certain type of language  they may feel better about using it. For this reason we too should do a review of words and phrases that might shed a negative light on our faith. We may have a ginormous problem and it may be on-going, even 24/7. Possibly negativity occupies our minds and souls. Remember, our faith is amazing and so is God’s grace. We can speak and sound like the positive, edifying people God created us to be.

Oh, and thank you in advance for reading this article!

Michael McCullar