I love words. Always have. I love their efficiency, love how they sound, how they are constantly changing, what they can tell you about the speaker. If you shut your eyes and just listen you can actually tell the age of the speaker by the words he or she is using. Or ‘they’ are using. See what I mean.

My friend Mo, he of the Departure Bay Dog Park in Nanaimo BC uses words sparingly. That is to say he uses the same words repeatedly with a minimalists skill, peppering each sentence with some level of profanity as he deems is required in the moment. I’ve spent the better part of two years getting to know Mo and I’m pretty sure he has a word count under two dozen all tied together with some version of the word ‘fuck’. Now don’t get me wrong Mo is smart, very smart. He can conjugate ‘to fuck’ with the best of them. It’s just that he has chosen to narrow his vocabulary using profanity for impact, information and punctuation. In fact, he uses so much profanity that now I find myself deaf to it. Then every once in a while and out of nowhere Mo will throw you a curve ball. So I’m at the Departure Bay Dog Park recently catching up with Mo and Dan,

“You know I’ll tell you a fucking story. I was down in my fucking rumpus room …”

It was Mo, although I suspect you had already guessed that, given what I told you earlier. But there it was. Actually all I heard was ‘rumpus room’ but those two little words were a trove of information. Mo’s ‘rumpus room’ gave insight into when he was born, the TV shows he watched and the type of house he grew up in. I pegged him for 1950, growing up in a post war split level with a downstairs play room for the kids, watching June Cleaver on the black and white television telling Ward that he had “been a little hard on the Beaver last night”. Now if you think that a little too precise I should probably tell you that I know how old Mo is, where he was born, the house he grew up in and yes we’ve shared stories about ‘Leave it to Beaver’. Whatever! The words we use are the ageing equivalent of rings on a tree.

We all have our word tells. I still call my iPhone my telephone. I know that’s ageing me but it’s somehow soothing, like my favourite blanket, words I grew up with and understand, words that are mine damn it!

Words of course come and go, in and out of fashion like hemlines. But I make it my business to stay hip to the trends. Communicating is not about being heard, it’s about being understood so I have to use words that are meaningful to the reader or to my listener. And if that isn’t challenging enough now they’re banning words. Who bans words? Well other than Republicans in Florida I mean?

In the 70’s George Carlin raised hell as a pot smoking counter culture comedian. He had a list of banned words: ‘7 Words You Can’t Say on TV’ and in fairness they were a Who’s Who of Dirty Words, each one of them Hall of Fame members in the Museum of Crude. The ban didn’t make it past 1977 actually. Bans, history records, tend not to survive the next generation, or even the next decade. And besides it’s 2023, so who cares? That was back then, we’re far more enlightened now. Right?

Wrong!

We now live in the Golden Age of Banning.

Disagree.

Ban it.

Don’t like it.

Ban it.

Don’t understand it.

Ban it.

Well, thank goodness we have the Lake Superior State Banished Words List. Finally, a non-denominational, non-partisan arbiter of right and wrong, yes or no, in or out, banned and not banned. Pheewwpphhh! For a moment there I was beginning to think I would have to decide something for myself.

Take ‘It is what it is’ for example. First time I heard that phrase I literally said, “What the hell is that?!” But all is not lost, it was in last year but now thankfully and not a moment too soon, it’s been banned in the ‘The Lake Superior State 2023 Banished Words List’. Well, to be precise then, it is what it was, isn’t it. Good Lord, what a mess we’re getting ourselves into.

And before ‘it is what it is’ is consigned for all time to the Word Waste Bin a final word if I may. Have you ever heard a more fatuous phrase? Now don’t go all ‘he called me fat!’ on me. I did not, fatuous is pointless as in have you ever heard a more pointless phrase than ‘it is what it is‘. Ban fatuous and die! ‘It is what it is’ well, it’s Seinfeldian; a string of five little words which accomplish nothing, neither advancing the conversation nor the understanding of the listener, failing in the first and last purpose of any word or words. Okay, thanks for that, I feel better now.

Now where was I? Ah yes, something about hemlines.

Man I do go on sometimes. I know, right?! (banned Lake Superior State 2020 Banished Words List). But, let me ask you this (banned Lake Superior State 2014).

Oh come on! (you guessed it, 2015). These lists began back in 1976 and now include 800 words and phrases that have been struck. I suppose it serves a purpose, overuse and misuse aside words must remain meaningful (banned 1976 not a little ironically as ‘meaningless’.)

WAIT, WHAT?! (banned 2022).

I don’t know why I go on about these things but look at the end of the day (1999) and with all that being said (2022) sometimes it just feels good to circle back (banned 2021) and deep dive (2020) into these discussions.

Or maybe, just maybe, the world has officially gone cra-cra! (2021)

Good Lord, help me now! (not banned).

Yet.