No collusion! (Or at least a lot less of it.)
That is according to a Michigan school’s latest “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.”
The politically charged term at the center of US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether US President Donald Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia is among 18 entries on Lake Superior State University’s 44th annual list, which was released yesterday.
University spokesman John Shibley said the school received about 3,000 votes through its Web site and Facebook pages.
Although Trump has repeatedly tweeted that there was “no collusion” and “collusion” was among the top-three vote-getters — along with “wheelhouse and “in the books” — its inclusion should not be interpreted as a political statement by the list-makers. Rather, voters apparently were just irritated by hearing and reading the word so often in the past year, he said.
“I can usually read a political nomination when I see it,” he said. “If I saw a string of trolls trying to pack the ballot box for political reasons, I would have caught it.”
The other words or expressions to make the list are “wrap my head around,” “grapple,” “optics,” “eschew” and “thought leader.” Also submitted by the public for the pyre of popular parlance: “platform,” “ghosting,” “yeet,” “litigate,” “crusty,” “legally drunk,” “importantly” and “accoutrements.”
Two other political entries also made it: “Most important election of our time” and “OTUS” acronyms such as POTUS — for president of the US.
The acronyms that have found their way onto cable news shows date back to the late 19th century, when POTUS and SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the US) were used as telegraph codes, according to Merriam-Webster.
FLOTUS, for the first lady, first appeared in the 1980s.
Among the newest terms — yet one the curators feel has outlived its usefulness — is “yeet,” which variously refers to the name of a dance, a taunt, an excited acknowledgement or throwing something.
Other words are commonly known in one setting, such as “litigate” among lawyers, but get trotted out by some politicians and pundits for hashing out “any matter of controversy,” according to one submission.
The list is meant to be in fun, but it is bound to raise some hackles.
Some members of the public were upset at the 2002 inclusion of “9-11,” which received thousands of votes for banishment, Shibley said.
It was deemed by nominators as “too much [of] a shorthand” for the tragic terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but people misunderstood and thought the school was “thumbing our noses at 9/11,” he said.
Shibley said that with the rise of social media and ever-more-divisive politics, people have even “shorter fuses,” which means he and his colleagues tread carefully.
After all, the aim of the list is not to inflame, but to entertain.
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