I’ve got a big batch of nominations to catch up on. Here are some greatest
hits from the Banned for Life inbox.

Byf would ban:

Outage: A term coined by power companies to sound like a power “failure” is not their fault.

Adam Trotter laments the Dance of the Hours:

Considering he only has thirty seconds per appearance, it’s odd that my morning TV weatherman wastes 10 of them on:

• “around the noontime hour“
• “through the morning hours“
• “during the peak commuter traffic hours“

and so on. If I had all the hours he implies, I’d have time to bake my own  bread for my breakfast-hour toast.

Himitsu disdains:

• Evil: Evil seems to get the most play when used to mean “people our government doesn’t like, and thus doesn’t want you to like.” The term rarely gets used to describe the “friendly” countries/regimes that have
  tremendous records of blatant human-rights violations.
• The Superlative: The news is full of the biggest, best, smallest, fastest, strongest, weakest, most horrible, etc. It’s one thing if the thing in question has been carefully measured, compared to all others of it’s ilk
  and demonstrated to be the most X, but quite often the superlative is used just to add emphasis. This situation is made even worse when you realize that it’s often applied to utterly subjective or otherwise unmeasurable terms,
  such as “most corrupt,” or better yet, “most evil.”

“These make me puke,” Fred Bradford avers:

• “juncture“
• “at this juncture“
• “24-7“
• “24-7-365“
• “slippery slope“
• ‘”Christian” anything — implying “good anything”

Judi Burger shares:

I would like to put forward my pet hate: utilise. When did “use”
become insufficient?

Lyle R. Rolfe muses:

What ever happened to said? Now people say “I went” and “he went” and “I go” or “he goes“, for said. And to make it worse, journalists are quoting people saying this. If the reporters don’t do it, I believe editors should pull the quotes and paraphrase with said when they see these quotes in a story to keep the bad habit from being repeated. And it’s not just the youths, but highly educated people who talk this way.