2025 Banished Words List | Hacker News Reader

2025 Banished Words List

lssu.edu

> A classic offender, “utilize” proves that longer is not always better. Why complicate things when “use” works just fine? Everett from Cumby, Texas encourages readers to “Write like you talk,” and added, “Lord, I hope you don’t talk like that.”

Reading an article when suddenly a random personal attack appears.

Yep, 100%

100% period.

This. Pure facts. Literally.

Here I am, discovering in practice that each generation has their own favorite words.

"Utilize" always makes me uncontrollably giggle due to its use in the movie Idiocracy.

Unless you are Taylor Swift, it might be time to leave “era” behind. The term’s overuse has made every fleeting moment feel like it demands a historical marker. Leah of Holland, Michigan submits, “Thanks to the name of Taylor Swift’s tour, now there is an ‘era’ for everyone and everything! ‘He’s in his fatherhood era’, ‘She’s in her pottery-making era,’ etc., etc.. It’s overused and tiring.”

I’m moving on to “aeon” now.

I haven't really noticed this one. I guess I've missed out on the "era" era.

Which ominously opens up the possibility of aeonics.

The fact that nobody knows what skibidi means implies it has more life left in it

When I learned that the youngest were keeping source engine animations alive in the most hilarious way possible I appreciated it.

Not my kind of humor, but I remember the 420 MLG era. Brainrot is universal.

MLG parody videos were a parody. This is... not?

For me, skibidi is always going to be connected with John Scatman first, Little.Big second, and there is no third for now.

Most people who use the word skibidi dont remember Scatman (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy8kmNEo1i8) and were not even born when the song came out :-)

Where’s “iconic”? That one had a very rapid ride from wherever it came from to the lexicon of Madison Avenue.

2024 and 2009: https://www.lssu.edu/resources/about-lssu/traditions/banishe...

I'd be happy if people on HN would drop "Learnings." It just shows you never learned the word "lessons."

Somewhere on the internet I once ran across a HN BINGO card. From memory:

   Walled garden
   Regulatory capture
   An unreasonable...
   So...
   Period. Full stop.

There were a bunch of others. Enough that the grid was expanded beyond B-I-N-G-O.

Oh, hell yes. The anonymous author of "The Unendurable Horrors of Leadership Camp" agrees as well.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2016/06/the-unendurable-...

> I'd be happy if people on HN would drop "Learnings." It just shows you never learned the word "lessons."

Agreed. Using that "L" word makes one look out-of-touch to me, and I'm disinclined to trust anyone using it.

Same for "performant". There are many ways that something can perform. Are you trying to tell me that something is fast? Why can't you just say that it's fast, and leave it at that?

> Learnings

Sounds like something from Borat

Years ago, I remember Jim Sterling ranting about an "iconic" hat from Ubisoft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN4Umsjp6Cs&t=79s

Though somewhat different than the intent of the list, I'm amazed at the rise of "payed" in place of "paid". I rarely ever saw this error before a couple of years ago and now it's become commonplace, even with people who formerly used paid correctly. I keep expecting to find out it's some recent cultural reference but so far that doesn't appear to be the case.

They're phonetically identical in my dialect so I think this is simply a spelling/transcription error, not usage per se.

It’s official, cringe is dead :)

100%

Period.

The end of the cringe era, 100%, period.

Is there an opposite list, a list of underused and trendy words?

Or does this sort of recognition already ~makes it cringe~ sorry, disqualifies the word?

At least in my local sphere, cringe still has meaning, and I've not heard of the uses in the article although admittedly I live under a bit of a rock. The same goes for era.

I've never heard of skibidi, sorry not sorry, dropped, or IYKYK. But I do agree that "game-changer" is overused.

>> I've never heard of skibidi

Oh my, you need to meet some of the Gen A crowd

To be honest I am not even sure what Gen XYZ even means any more...too many free variables!

The article sounds like someone complaining about words that they don't like to hear, but framed in a way to try to get others to stop saying them. It makes me cringe bigly

utilize been on my internal list for about a decade. always has the opposite effect as intended on me. i question if the writer is playing intellectual dress up.

our CEO does it A LOT. a personal emperors new clothes scenario. anyone ever confront upper management and correct language that signals they dont know what theyre talking about?

it seems to me that many small business ceos are emperors in new clothes talking amongst themselves so i rationalize thats just how they speak and expect to be spoken to. confronting not worth risking a knee-jerk-response to an injured ego

If your ceo saying “utilize” instead of “use” is your most trenchant criticism of your ceo, consider yourself blessed. Better to let this one go.

If your CEO is always saying "utilize", I'd just make the "doin it" finger motions every time until he stops.

Let me interject for a moment to tell you about our lord and saviour, “leverage”.

And disciples "reach out", "touch base", and "circle back."

Don’t mention them in vain, lest you call Synergy from the deeps of oblivion! Best of breed, of course.

Enterprise-grade at scale.

i hear "leverage" more than see it in docs/email, but almost only ever see "utilize" in writing.

I’m entertaining a hypothesis that “Leverage” rolls from the tongue smoothly, but “utilize” is more of a breeze to produce on a QWERTY keyboard.

The annual list of words and phrases that have worn out their welcome.

Rizz?

Only if you don’t have any

"Ground breaking", "Delve", "Kaleidoscope", "Symphony", Testament To"

Pretty much everything from here: https://github.com/sam-paech/antislop-sampler/blob/main/slop...

'Slop' on the other hand has a bright future ahead. I picked it up just last week, and it is so incredibly apt at what it does. I like it (not the thing it refers to though, i.e., AI generated content and imagery).

“Optics” is at its peak. I can’t wait to see it go.

Likewise since I work in the field of actual optics. Made the list in 2019:

https://www.lssu.edu/resources/about-lssu/traditions/banishe...

My maternal grandmother was a psychologist. I grew up watching pop-psychology become a thing and it drove her crazy. I thank god she passed away before "toxic" became wide spread.

When will Masters Degree be banished?

I'm glad this list dropped, these words are so cringe.

Leverage and outcomes should be there.

Is this a list of some college dean's pet peeves?

Let me add:

"Aesthetic"

"Energy" (when used outside physics)

- journey (cf. era)

- highly (used as an intensifier)

"ick" also needs to die.

cringe

Whatever boomer. This list is pretty cringe

I know this is a joke, but it makes curious. Is "boomer" just used a derogatory term for people older than the speaker now? I ask because the youngest boomers are 60 now and in practice I see the term used against people younger than 60.

It's used to describe an attitude or behavioral stereotype, rather than strictly to refer to that demographic group in the US.

You just imagine some little shit say these words to you in precisely the way that makes your fists itch to make a dent in their face.

That said, if your antagonist evokes the “little shit” vibes without you consciously thinking that, it’s probably only fair that you evoke “boomer” vibes for them. Well.

(It’s also apparent that “boomer” has evolved to mean any old fart.)

It's amusing that the phrase "Don't trust anyone over 30" gained popularity when the Baby Boomers were under 30 but now the sentiment is focused against them (and Gen-X and Millennials).

> the youngest boomers are 60 now and in practice I see the term used against people younger than 60.

In those cases the term isn't being used because the speaker is attempting to accurately identify the age of the person they are referring to. It is name-calling.

I’m not a boomer but my kids say “Ok boomer” to me all the time

Millennial gamers had a collective quarter-life crisis a few years back that manifested itself in form of memes where anyone who whined about modern games being bad was called an out of touch "30 year old boomer". Then as retaliation the whiners started calling anyone who defended modern games as "zoomers", which gave the generation Z a fancy new nickname.

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