Daily writing prompt

If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?

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Probably devastated. Is someone really broken beyond recovery or repair? Is life as they’ve known it over because a favorite athlete or musical artist decides to retire or move in a different direction, or they stopped carrying someone’s favorite ice cream at the grocery store?

Even if the circumstances are more legitimately serious, are people truly ruined to the point of having to start over? Sometimes yes, but more often, it seems, they’re just engaging in hyperbole, or at a loss for a more fitting word.

This word is used so blithely so often that when it actually fits a situation, it loses its punch.

A close second might be traumatized.

Daily writing prompt

If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?

View all responses

In general, any word that becomes cliche, so over-used that it carries little to no weight anymore. Lots of words fit this category.

Narrowing it to one is difficult, but the first to come to mind is “devastated,” or “devastating.” People are devastated by so many things– clothes that don’t match, a favorite actor leaves a show, they ran out of maple syrup at Trader Joe’s. It’s misused or hyperbolized (not sure that’s a word) so often that when reporters or survivors at the scene of some natural disaster or a plane crash use the word where it actually fits, it loses some of its punch.

A close second is “traumatized.”