One of my favorite rituals each New Year is to check the release of Lake Superior State University's (Michigan) list of banished words. The list includes words and pharses that, while trendy, have been over-used, misused and plain worn out over the previous year. So I went to the website and lo and behold, just as I suspected, topping the list is . . . "shovel-ready".

It appears to me that words and phrases in this year's banished word list fall largely in two categories: 1) government-speak, and 2) technology/social networking.

Banished words that would fit into the government-speak category are transparent/transparency, czar, teachable moment, "in these economic times", stimulus, toxic assets, and "too big to fail". We should consider automatically voting out politicians who over-use these words and phrases.  

Banished words and phrases that loosely fit into the technology/social networking category are tweet, app, sexting, friend (used as a verb), bromance, and chillaxin'.

Finally, at LSSU's suggestion (apparently no one made any nominations) Obama-prefixes or roots should have made the list:

"The LSSU Word Banishment Committee held out hope that folks would want to Obama-ban Obama-structions, but were surprised that no one Obama-nominated any, such as these compiled by the Oxford Dictionary in 2009: Obamanomics, Obamanation, Obamafication, Obamacare, Obamalicious, Obamaland….We say Obamanough already."

This is a refreshing activitiy coming from a state university. However, my understanding is that LSSU is in the UP of Michigan, where common sense and good humor may not yet be lost on people.