"It is what it is." That is the worst phrase I have heard and it won't go away! I particularly loathe this phrase because it is either used by people who do not take responsibility for their actions or by people who are apathetic.

First, I think you are one of the people that says "make sense" and that is why you responded and second, I happen to agree with your other points and lastly, have a good day David B!

becky, I don't like lastly...or firstly or secondly, etc. never got used to newbie. Icon is still a religious symbol to me. And slamdunk is too hard to be considered an easy mark. What about layup. Or neither.

and lastly the words I hate to hear in the office.."make sense?" this is offensive, stop it!! The person will TELL you if it doesn't make sense and most often the person knows your asking because you don't understand what you're babbling on about yourself!!

A most annoying "linker" is used by many of Leondard's guests: starting to answer EVERY question with "So .. " as if they were in mid-sentence. Hope you can coach/remind your guests to just start answering the question - No need for useless "So ..." PLEASE!

These conversations always make me think of Orwell's 1984. "Thoughtcrime" anyone?

OMG can we puhleese stop saying OMG??!

Overheard recently: an obsessive computer user described as "a mouse potato."

Speaking of selfies, it bothers me that most people spell it as "selfie" even when in the singular form.

How About Scroogle?

I hate the use of "optics" in political speak

"Up talk" is almost ALWAYS sarcastic..I like it, what like you don't?

How about one of the few "infixes" in English, the term "a-whole-nother" to mean another thing altogether? There are a few others but they're typically profane, such as "fan-[beep]ing-tastic".

I want to ban upspeak and the overused phrase "at the end of the dayyy..."

Hashtag - spoken aloud as denoting either the main subject or a brief one or compound word summation of a recent sentence/idea.

e.g. "My boyfriend is so overworked. He seems to thrive on working long hours. Hashtag: workaholic"

Also, feel free to ask me what an "Upsecsy" is.

"here's the thing" is gaining momentum, let's stop that one also!

Off subject, but why can't half the journalists properly pronounce "Pulitzer", as in the Pulitzer Prize, named after publisher Joseph Pulitzer?

What about pinning, pinned, pin due to Pinterest? Girls are also no longer being "pinned" by a boy :)

"Superstorm" has a quasi-legal connotation, because insurance companies will not cover "hurricane-related" damage, so a tree falling on a house in New Jersey was damaged by the "superstorm" and not the hurricane...

aftermath!

another computer-ism: the 'ctrl' key on the keyboard.
i have heard it called 'central' instead of 'control'.

The silliest popular phrase by the media is "political calculus". No one--other than media people--uses "political calculus" in conversion. The term makes no sense.

Just wanted to comment on Ben Zimmer's pronunciation of Elbridge Gerry's name. Although we say "gerrymander" with a soft "g," which seems logical because it's followed by the vowel "e," Elbridge Gerry himself pronounced his name with a hard "g," Just another example of how we allow our language to morph through the centuries. And then there's the term "morph..."

how about a 'non-word'? the icons used in programs.
my favorite is 'save' that shows an icon of a floppy drive.

"supposably" instead of "supposedly" - puhleesee it's not a word!!

"under the bus" puhleese stop saying this!!

I detest "back in the day". Incomplete thought, meaningless, lazy and nonsensical.

WOuld Ben Zimmer go back to "all in"; it's routinely used nowadays including by the woman in the Petraeus affair (and author of the bio of him that is titled by the same term) in seeming mistaken exchange for "all out"; see the dictionary definitions of both; "all out" should mean "overwhelming effort" or "holding nothing back" while "all in" has historically meant "exhausted" and "bushed".

YOLO seems to me to be an alternative to the classic "Carpe Diem." Are there any other examples of classic words or phrases that have been "modernized" for the twitter/smart phone age?

Verdant is my favorite word!

a : green in tint or color
b : green with growing plants <verdant fields>
2
: unripe in experience or judgment : green 9a, b