Tomkat, Bradgelina Get Pwned In Annual Banned Word List

ClickonDetroit ^ | December 31, 2006 | AP

[ShadowDancer]

Tomkat, Bradgelina Get Pwned In Annual Banned Word List

POSTED: 12:24 pm EST December 31, 2006
UPDATED: 12:44 pm EST December 31, 2006

DETROIT -- Online video gamers inadvertently stumbled onto a pop culture phenomenon when they began championing the use of "pwn," a misspelling of "own."

Now, linguist police around the globe say it's high time to bury the cryptic term, which means to dominate or soundly defeat.

"This word is just an overly used Internet typo," said Tory Rowley, of Corunna, Mich. "It has been overused to the point that people who play online games are using it in everyday speech."

"Pwn" is one of 16 words or phrases that appear in Lake Superior State University's annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness. The Sault Ste. Marie, school, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, released its 32nd annual version Monday after sifting through more than 4,500 nominations.

The list reads like a lexicon of popular culture, and is fed by peculiarities and annoyances from the media, politics, entertainment, advertising and elsewhere. Submissions are culled from the university's Web site and evaluated by an ad hoc committee over the holidays, said university spokesman Tom Pink.

"We try to divide them up into categories if we can," said university spokesman Tom Pink. "It's a long time just reading e-mail, and the list is lighthearted, of course, so we look for witty explanations of why a word or phrase should be banned."

Among this year's picks are "Gitmo," the military's widely co-opted shorthand for a military detention center in Cuba whose use, the university said, "drives a wedge wider than a split infinitive."

"When did the notorious Guantanamo Bay Naval Base change to 'Gitmo,' a word that conjures up an image of a fluffy and sweet character from a Japanese anime show?" asked Marcus W., of St. Louis.

Word-watchers piled on the media's practice of "combined celebrity names" such as "TomKat" or "Brangelina." They also vilified the ubiquitous pharmaceutical industry mantra "ask your doctor," which the university called "the chewable vitamin morphine of marketing."

Real estate listings got in on the act this year for the frequent use of the word "boast." As in "master bedroom boasts his-and-her fireplaces - never 'bathroom apologizes for cracked linoleum,"' quipped Morris Conklin, of Lisbon, Portugal.

Not all of this year's nominations are new terms, but merely older terms that linguistic purists have determined are no longer tolerable. Witness "awesome," to which the university assigned a one-year moratorium in 1984 "during which it is to be rehabilitated until it means "fear mingled with admiration or reverence; a feeling produced by something majestic."

University officials concurred with those who say there is no hope for the term whose meaning was perhaps forever altered during the '80s.

"The kind of tennis shoes you wear, no matter how cute, don't fit the majestic design of the word," said Leila Hill, of Damascus, Md.

The list, which in recent years has included such gems as "show me the money, "erectile dysfunction" and "holiday tree," is closing in on its 1,000th banishment. Yet despite the university's vigilance, Pink said he's not aware that any dictionaries have followed up on its advice.

"Sometimes people write us and tell us, this isn't working," Pink said. "I tell them we need an enforcement division."

The list can be found online at the university's Web site.

[latina4dubya]

i had not realized it was "Bradgelina..." i thought it was "Brangelina." my bad... (now i do believe "my bad" ought to be banned)...

[The KG9 Kid]

"Pone"

[Professional Engineer]

Vey Hugh and Series.

Gotta take a shower now. BBL

[bannie]

GitmoGitmoGitmoGitmoGitmoGitmo

[bannie]

I wish to holy hell they would have.

Watch it..."holy hell's" gonna' get on the list, and THEN you'll be in big trouble. :-o

[ShadowDancer]

Please, I have many, many more to replace it with.

[bannie]

haha. And when those wear out, we can make more!

[longtermmemmory]

How about banning women with a "y".

or "undocumented worker"

or "judicial independence" (code for allowing judges to make up laws regardless of the black letter law)

[Petronski]

There's no 'e' in the word pwn3d.

[Lijahsbubbe]

Great list!

Especially "we're pregnant"!

[The_Reader_David]

Rot. It's not a misspelling: It's a portmantaeu word (as described in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.

It compresses into one word 'played', 'owned' and 'won'.

There is no 'Academie Francaise' for English. The prescriptivists who try to keep the language frozen or govern from some elite center its progress will inevitably get pwned by actual usage. Hopefully, pwned is here to stay like the modal use of 'hopefully'.

[kenth]

No pr0n?

[cloud8]

"But how is 'pwn' pronounced? Pawn? Pown? Poon?"

> As a linguist, I can answer that for you. It's one of those words delegated to the irrelevant and can be pronounced in any number of ways because no one in History will give a rat's rump about it!

Pwned originally dates back to the days of WarCraft, when a map designer mispelled "Own" as "Pwn". What was originally supposed to be "player has been owned." was "player has been pwned." See the Urban Dictionary entry. Here's a cite from 1989:

so I guess pwn has already wormed its way into history and the language.

> In it's most direct, ancient translation it means, "You're a LOSER...

BTW, Miss Linguist, no apostrophes in English possessive pronouns ;-)

[Rick Deckard]

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Good God, Man! What happened to your dog? LOL!

[Dead Corpse]

[Rick Deckard]

It's not mine, but it obviously got "pwn3d" by a porcupine.

Happy New Year!

[lesser_satan]

Holy crap, he didn't know when to quit! I wonder how the porcupine looked, other than being a few quills the poorer.

[Rick Deckard]

I wonder how much the vet bill was to remove all those quills. I'd think that "Spuds" learned his lesson about messing with porcupines.