You Don't Say

Every year the folks who publish Webster's Dictionary add a few words to keep the reference book current and relevant. This makes perfect sense to me since words that we use frequently today didn't exist a few years ago. In 2008 they added 25 new words or terms - "webinar", "dirty bomb", and "mental health day" were among them.
I'm not sure what the procedure is for submitting a new term, but here's how I think it could be improved........for every term or word you ADD, you have to REMOVE one. This would still keep the references current, but also allow us to purge some of those stale terms that people don't use - or shouldn't use. What are some examples of words or terms we should remove, you say? Thought you'd never ask.

• "No problem" - This seems to have replaced "you're welcome" in the vocabulary of many people. Nothing makes you feel more like a valued customer than for an employee to say "No problem" when you thank them. In most cases I didn't even consider that it might have been a problem, but I'm glad to know that is wasn't.
• "Tell us in your own words" - Is there really any other option? Could I tell you in someone else's words, even if I wanted to? And if I could tell you in someone else's words, why wouldn't you just read it for yourself?
• "It's always the last place you look" - Well of course it is! Why would you look in another place after you found it?
• "A fight to the finish" - Makes sense to me. Why would you keep fighting after you finish? At the finish seems to be a good place to stop.
• "No holds barred" - I never understood this one, really. Were there ever any ocassions when we did bar holds? And if so, which ones were they?
• "Amazing" - This one is just plain overused. Webster defines "amazing" as "causing great wonder or surprise". Well, apparently there's a lot of that going on. I hear people saying the house was amazing, the car was amazing, the movie was amazing, the dress was amazing. With all this "great wonder and surprise" going on, it's a wonder we can get anything done. Let's take it out of the dictionary and force people to use words like beautiful, interesting, or cute - but not amazing.

I'm sure there are lots of others that could be discontinued, but these just happened to bubble up to the top. I'm not sure this idea will fly, but if we're not using words there's no sense in printing definitions to them. Besides, if we take out as many as we add every year, the dictionary will always stay the same size and we won't waste all that paper and ink. You know me, always concerned about the environment.

Till next time.....