Mobile apps, tweets and sexting should all be banned… as words

Mobile terminology is swarming the English language these days, and a list of “bannable words” is no exception. The Lake Superior State University (LSSU) has been publishing a list of words it wants to see buried every year since 1975. Each year, thousands of nominations are made for new words to be added to the black list… and this year 20% of the word on the Banished Words list came straight from the world of mobiles.

What are the mobile words that they want banished?

TWEET

I don’t need to tell you just how fast Twitter has exploded into the public conscious this year. Nor do I need to tell you how many people hate Twitter. It seems to attract adulation and loathing in equal measures… but that’s not what annoys LSSU in particular. It objects to the sheer misuse of the word Tweet, both on its own and in combination with other words. You know what I mean: tweetaholic, retweet, twitterhea, twitterature, twittersphere, etc.

APP

Short for “application”, this word has become one of the most powerful in the mobile industry. Mobile applications are a vast and young new industry… and the LSSU objects to the continuing over-abbreviation of the English language. As one commenter put it: “Must we b sbjct to yt another abrv? Why does the English language have to fit on a two-inch screen? I hate the sound of it. I think I’ll listen to a symph on the rad.”

SEXTING

The subject of articles on GoMo News in the past, “sexting” is the practice of sending sexy texts. This doesn’t just cover SMS though – people send explicit images and videos via mobile as well. The objection of the LSSU here seems to be that by giving a name like this to a potentially damaging trend validates in some ways – and they would rather see it discouraged.

To see the full list, go to http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php

What we think?

I used to be real stickler when it came to this kind of thing… but I’m far more relaxed about it now. English is a living, changing language – and part of the reason it is so successful is that it is hugely adaptable. Neologisms are extremely easy to create in English, as it adopts and adapts whatever words it comes into contact with.

My main interest in this article is simply that it highlights how firmly lodged new mobile trends are in the zeitgeist. (Is “zeitgeist” a Banished Word? Hmmm… maybe I should check the full list.)