Vocabulary

Have you ever wondered about that weird expression that grandma used to say? Martha Barnette, co-host of the radio show and podcast A Way with Words, likely knows the history of that expression. Barnette has spent her life being a word detective, and in her new book, "Friends with Words: Adventures in Languageland," she shares that story. During her two decades on the show, Martha has seen that people of all stripes are curious about etymology, they revel in slang, are surprised by regional vocabulary, delighted by idioms, and eager to share that weird phrase Grandma always used to say.

If New Year's resolutions include improving vocabulary, then the 2024 Banished Words List slaps.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary set out recently to document some of these words on Twitter, and was flooded with responses from people offering their own.

After we published our list of terms likely to loom large in this year's vocabulary, readers submitted their own nominations. Here's a sampling.

In its annual Banished Words List, the faculty of Lake Superior State University also suggests removing from your vocabulary overused phrases such as "Does that make sense?" and "It is what it is."