Stephen King has worked with words for decades. More than this, he has used words to captivate, terrify and enthral millions of people, and he’s made quite a good living out of them too.
Thanks to his work, he’s arguably in a fair position to criticise the way language is developing, and he recently aired his views on the latest words and phrases.
The phrases he chose to berate include those fluffy words that fill a sentence but mean very little such as:
- At this point in time
- At the end of the day
Along with phrases that are so ambiguous, they have no meaning at all, such as:
- Some people say
- Many believe
- The consensus is
He also expressed his distaste at acronyms such as LOL and OMG. These words, invented for texting, are now actually being used in real face to face conversation, so instead of giggling a person will end a sentence with LOL.
IT MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL
In business, there are a lot of terms used every day that have little or no meaning. Despite this, they are still overused in the corporate world as a type of language bespoke to game changers.
Phrases such as:
- Thinking outside the box
- Blue sky thinking
- Laser focused
- End of play
- Guestimate
- Ticking all the right boxes
are high on Stephen King’s List.
What words or phrases would you like to see obliterated from the English Language?
