Lake Superior State University published its annual list of “Banished Words” that meet the institute’s qualifications of “Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.”

Recipients of the honor of being shuffled out the lexicon door are

• SHOVEL-READY
• TRANSPARENT/TRANSPARENCY
• CZAR
• TWEET
• APP
• SEXTING
• FRIEND (as a verb)
• TEACHABLE MOMENT
• IN THESE ECONOMIC TIMES….
• STIMULUS
• TOXIC ASSETS
• TOO BIG TO FAIL
• BROMANCE
• CHILLAXIN’
• OBAMA-prefix or roots?

Of course, “teachable moment” holds a special place in my heart, by which I mean “stuffed in the Devil’s mouth next to Judas Iscariot”. I do, however, like the recently-promoted-to-verb “friend” as I believe most words could become verbs if we encouragemented it.

My students think that by randomly substituting words from the thesaurus into their papers, they will sound more brilliant than they actually are. Not to say they’re “dumb”, they’re not; they just… don’t have a lot of exposure to the nuances of the English language. However, the quite brilliant people at The Onion stepped up to the plate today to show the semantically unwise the right way to use the thesaurus, to hilarious effect:

87 Killed In Violent Kerfuffle
March 11, 2008 | Issue 44•11

ISLAMABAD—Eighty-seven people were killed and 114 wounded at an open-air market in Islamabad yesterday in one of the worst ruckuses to hit the Pakistani capital in years. Witnesses said that the bloody to-do occurred shortly before noontime prayers, and that dozens were instantly killed by the doozy of a shockwave. Many more were reportedly trampled to death in the rush to escape the foofaraw. “It was as though some invisible hand had come through to wipe out all that was good and human,” onlooker Taufiq Jinnah said. “There was so much death and carnage—how could God let such a brouhaha happen?” The Pakistani government, which promised a major counter-hubbub against those responsible, would not rule out a small-scale nuclear donnybrook.

Is there any word inn the English language funnier than “kerfuffle”? I don’t think so!

OK, maybe “donnybrook”.