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Inevitably, 2017 will be a big year for words. After all, our president uses the best ones. But, just as there are the best words, there are also the worst words. The moists, the panties, the horrific combination of the two.
The Prompt staff huddled up and created something of a non-users manual for words, exploring some of the most jarring and grating words in the English language. If you don’t mind, we prefer you stop using them altogether.
Jillian Conochan: Please Don’t Use Lazy Portmanteaus
🎵 Libtard, Obummer, and all of their children.
Repugnican/rethugnican, I’m wholly nonpartisan.
Shortcutted insults hurled by the herds,
These are a few of my most hated words.
Lamestream and sheeple are uncreative and lazy,
And mostly tell others that you’re f*cking crazy.
If you have ideas that you’d like to express,
Stop cloaking thoughts in a portmanteau dress.
A snowflake was once a magnificent thing,
Instead it’s now used as a cheap slur to sling.
Of Eskimos’ one hundred-plus words for snow,
None means what you think, as far as I know. 🎵
Zach Straus: Please Don’t Say A Myriad
Imagine a lake. A beautiful lake. An alpine cirque, crystal clear.
Now, imagine a giant. A terrible giant. An enormous dirtbag, full of hate.
Picture that giant shitting into that lake.
Picture whatever kind of shit is the worst, in your mind. Corn-studded logs. Rabbity pellets. Iceberg turds like floating poop emojis.
Contrast the two images. The once-beautiful water turned diarrhea milkshake.
This is how I feel when you use “myriad” as a noun instead of an adjective. When you say “myriad of.”
Except you are the giant and the lake is my mouth.
There are myriad words in the English language for you to ruin and change through common use. Just let me keep this one.
Meg Kearns: Please Don’t Say Flesh
One syllable, five letters. Like an onomatopoeia in that saying it, starting with the potential of the light and airy “fl,” right into the grating harshness of the open “e,” and abruptly ending in the weird, spittle-filled “sh,” just feels… fleshy.
Flesh. Fleshy, fatty, sweaty. Gross.
Flesh-eating virus. Flesh wound. Sins of the flesh. Word of God made flesh, then consumed in a cold church too early on a Sunday morning. O, that this too too solid (or is it sullied?) flesh would melt.
Because I really, really hate the word flesh.
Scott Snowman: Please Don’t Say Wallah
As in, “I want to sound sophisticated and cultured, so wallah! I think I just said “voilà!”
There’s something so irreverently “America, fuck yeah!” about the look and sound of that “word.” Its too-proudly rounded phonics, lazy and boring vowels, and the intentional disappearing of a clearly audible V all spell “lazy and ignorant.”
Kelaine Conochan: Please Don’t Say Gauze
You’re bleeding, but you don’t have a Band-Aid. You just have athletic tape and an ineffective woven cotton dressing that is also the grossest syllable in the English language. Don’t worry, Calliope. I’ve got gauze.
Not gah-OO-zay, like off the lips of some beautiful Latino immigrant (for real, love you guys please don’t go). GAWWWWZE.
Now look, I’m from New Jersey. A place where coffee is pronounced CAW-fee and chocolate is pronounced CHAWC-lit. That’s just how we TAWK. It’s fine. But the word GAUZE, with its phlegmmy G and its garish Z. And that very involved, deep AWWWW, like you’re talking to the plastic ghost of Joan Rivers. GAUZE. It just makes me NAWseous.
Jared Hutchinson: Please Don’t Say Bean
If a modifier comes before the word (black, red, kidney, pinto, etc.), it cancels out the weirdness. But if “bean*” is the first word or only word in the noun phrase, it feels really uncomfortable. Like prostate exam uncomfortable. It doesn’t even matter that I frequently eat them.
Bean curd. Beantown. Bean juice (that stuff that leaks through your Chipotle bowl). Shudder.
*Bean bag is a notable exception, probably due to it not referring to food.
Jesse Stone: Please Don’t Say Selectron, Squark, Sneutrino
Selectron. Ever heard of it? How about the squark? Hmm. The sneutrino? In case that last one didn’t give it away, these are all examples of sparticles. Sparticles are (hypothetical) “super particles” that show up in a theory of physics called supersymmetry, which posits for every “regular” particle we already know about (electrons, quarks, etc.) a corresponding superpartner.
It took a decade to tease out from the math of supersymmetry a host of new particles—but apparently only five minutes to name them.
MK McWeeney: Please Don’t Say Penetrate
There is no topic where the word penetrate is acceptable. None, zero, nothing. It makes me squirm when I hear play-by-play announcers describe a play where a player “penetrates and dishes” to a teammate. Nope. That player “drives and dishes” to his teammate. Every single synonym of penetrate is superior to the word itself. Now, excuse me while I hurl from using that word four more times than it ever should be used.
Josh Bard: Please Don’t Say Perfect
Because no matter what the internets would lead you to believe, there hasn’t ever been a documented perfect response or perfect takedown or perfect anything! Do you people even know what perfect is? Has anyone in this family ever even seen a chicken!? Perfect isn’t pretty good. Perfect is only perfect. Here’s a general rule: If it’s on social media, it is disqualified from being perfect.
Save your perfects because sometime, maybe, if you are lucky enough, you will see a perfect thing. And it will be so all-encompassing, so powerful, so gobsmackingly phenomenal that reaching for you stupid phone won’t be one of the first 100 things you think to do. You will understand it so clearly, like when Neo finally sees the world in black and green numbers. So, for now, fuck your perfects.
Erin Vail: Please Don’t Say The New England Patriots are Super Bowl Champions
I’m lying face down on the floor of my apartment. My heart is heavy. I flip over onto my belly, and sigh. The TV flickers, but I don’t want to look at what’s playing. I text a few of my cousins, sad and angry.
Why is this happening? I wonder. What did I do to deserve this? Why does evil defeat good? Will this ever be the Bills? Does God exist?
I see Tom Brady on screen. I flip him off. I hear the phrase, again and again, emanating from the TV: “The New England Patriots are Super Bowl champions. The New England Patriots are Super Bowl champions.”
I feel like I’ve been Mola Ram’d. I turn off the TV and go to bed. God, I hate the Patriots.
Jessica Dunton Fidalgo: Please Don’t Say Butthurt
A favorite among Internet trolls, which should be reason enough to discontinue it.
I used to think of it as basically a gay slur, which made me hate it right off the bat. But after reading this in an awesome post dissecting the word:
“Essentially, the term is used when someone is upset that someone else has gotten the better or them or beaten them or bested them in some way. That is to say, they dominated them. You know, like when someone is raped.”
Shudder. Butthurt, I think we’re done here.
Melissa Wyatt: Please Don’t Say Milky
While moist is most definitely at the top of my list, “milky” is not far behind. There is no good scenario in which this word should be used. It immediately makes me think of lactation or a certain STD. Milk is a liquid we drink to build strong bones, but as an adjective, it should be erased from the dictionary, our vocabulary, and our memory!
Craig Williams: Please Don’t Say Fiscally Conservative
I’m fiscally conservative. I think the government should live within its means.
But you support a higher minimum wage, food stamps, banking regulation, public schools, yada yada yada. You even support single-payer coverage.
But I don’t support government waste.
Nobody does! But that’s not fiscal conservatism. Fiscal conservatives think all those programs are government waste. Just because you think the government should balance its budget in some form or another, doesn’t make you fiscally conservative.
Jay Kasten: Please Don’t Type Withe
“With” and “the” are fine words on their own. But if I write them back to back I will always write “withe” because the world is a cold and cruel place. “Withe” is my nemesis, and I stand no chance.
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