Banned! The words they don't want you to use 24 August 2010
Have you gone wurfing recently? Indulged in a little nonversation? Ssh – the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t want you to talk about it! These and many other words were discovered to have been rejected by the OED. The OED did however welcome a whole host of “new” words onto their pages last week. So while ‘vuvuzela’ and ‘climate change’ were deemed acceptable, ‘freegan’, ‘sprummer’ and ‘polkadodge’ were not. Obviously this is about usage, but is it also about what seems more serious and credible? A lot of the rejected words sound suspiciously like they belong in Douglas Adams’s very amusing The Meaning of Liff. From a copywriting point of view, the more words the better. Or rather, the better words the better. I can’t imagine a day when I write a business website or brochure using the words ‘espacular’ or ‘glocalization’. But you never know…
A Google perspective on word use
As pointed out in one of the online comments on the Guardian article quoted above, you can actually see the timeline of a word’s usage with Google Trends! Interesting stuff.
Written by Camilla Zajac
Camilla Zajac is an award-winning copywriter dedicated to uncovering what’s exciting and unique about organisations and empowering them to communicate that with impact. Learn more about copywriting services from Green Light Copywriting.
