For a while, it was “paradigm”. Now, I hear “challenge” way too much. People use it to put a positive spin on loathesome chores and gruntwork. But it’s obvious and grates on my ears.
If you watch the home improvement shows on any of five channels, they use the word “pop” twice in each episode.
“Those colorful accents make the room pop.”
I think another overused word is “random” - mostly because it is used wrong. I hate to hear people describe things as random that are actually not the least bit a random occurance. I think it is worse when people pick that as a word to describe themselves. There are so many more descriptive words…choose a better one…
Brendon
Like, definitely.
Proactive is still running strongly in this neck of the woods.
“Basically.” Jeez, Louise…if I had the power to take that word out of circulation, I don’t think most of the people I work with would know what to do.
Surge
you can’t really shift your paradigm without leveraging your synergies. Just be proactive about creating win-win scenarios with a top-down approach.
Awesome
The.
“Ultimate.” It’s everywhere. Absolutely everything is the “ultimate” something.
In the trashy fun novel The Coyote Kings in the Space-Age Bachelor Pad, there’s a villain who uses “basically” in basically every sentence. He basically thinks it makes him sound smarter, and I thought it was basically hilarious.
Daniel
Whatever.
I would like people to stop saying “sweet.”
‘yourself’
Amazing
Like, seconded.
That is so yesterday.
Extreme.
People still say this? In my youth, it was synonymous with “bizarre” or unusual." Which made absolutely no sense. As in, “Then he started singing a Britney Spears song on the table. He’s so random!”
Ugh. Reminds me of the 90s version of the Valley Girl.
(In the interests of full disclosure, I was called “random” a few times. First time it was cute. Third time, I had the urge to smash a dictionary in the randomee’s grill.)
If you want to OD on cliches and hackneyed words, watch an episode of The Apprentice. I heard “think outside the box,” “synergy,” “step up,” and countless other scrapings of corporate-speak umpteen times in the first several minutes.