Facebookers, Googlers just got banished

Islamabad: Life without Facebook and Google may be impossible for most of those hooked to the internet, and yet both words as verbs stand banished in a popular annual word list that rolls out on New Year.

Michigan's Lake Superior State University (LSSU), which invites submissions through the year to make the list, has also banished "viral", "epic" and "fail" for their overuse and misuse.

The banishment of "Facebook" and "Google" as verbs was suggested by a Canadian word-watcher.

"Facebook is a great, addicting website. Google is a great search engine. However, their use as verbs causes some deep problems," he submitted at LSSU, which first came up with its wordlist in 1976 as a publicity-seeking exercise.

Topping the new word list is "viral".

Jim Cance submitted: "Often used to describe the spreading of items on the Internet i.e. 'The video went viral.' It is overused."

The word was also suggested for banishment by Kuahmel, who wrote: "This linguistic disease of a term must be quarantined."

"Epic" and related phrases "epic fail" an "epic win" were banished for their "overuse" of "epic proportions!" Similarly, "fail" has been deleted for having "failed us all".

Other words made redundant by LSSU are "the wow factor", "a-ha-moment", "back story", "BFF" (best friends forever) and "live life to the fullest".

However, the popular LSSU list may be beginning to lose its steam.

Word watchers are complaining about not banishing other overused words like "whatever", "I know right", "like", "technically", "actually", "basically", "frankly", "to be honest", "anyways", "constantly", "really" and "very" among others.

"Now, if we can just convince people to eliminate using 'actually,' 'technically' and 'basically.' These ego-stroking, filler words are rarely required by the people who over-use them," posted Michael G Robinson on LSSU's Facebook page.

Ole Jacobsen recommended that the word "like" be banished.

"How about a campaign to banish the use of the most over-used word: 'like'?" he wrote on Facebook.

John Robert Kovalchik endorsed the idea: "How ironic! I just hit the 'like' button for this site. I am so tired of "like' being used unnecessarily that I coined the word 'likquacious'. It is a combination of 'like' and 'loquacious' and therefore, fairly self-explanatory."