Plain speakers want bigly ban

You, sir, (or ma’am): focus, if you will, on a historic listicle containing words nominated for bigly banishment.

Michigan’s Lake Superior State University has released its 42nd annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness. The tongue-in-cheek list comes from suggestions to the university.

It includes ‘‘you, sir’’, ‘‘focus’’, ‘‘historic’’, ‘‘echo chamber’’, ‘‘bigly’’, ‘‘listicle’’ and ‘‘get your dandruff up’’, an apparent substitute for ‘‘dander’’. The others include ‘‘Frankenfruit,’’ ‘‘bete noire’’, ‘‘guesstimate’’, ‘‘dadbod,’’ ‘‘selfie drone’’, ‘‘post-truth’’ and ‘‘831’’ – a texting encryption of ‘‘I love you’’ (eight letters, three words, one meaning).

The divisive 2016 United States presidential election influenced nominations, and was reflected in the inclusion of ‘‘bigly’’ and ‘‘posttruth’’. President-elect Donald Trump was fond of saying ‘‘big league’’ but making it sound like ‘‘bigly’’, an archaic adverb or adjective dating to around 1400.

‘‘Post-truth,’’ a term sometimes used to describe the current political climate, was recently named Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year.

John Shibley, the list’s compiler-in-chief, said there was ‘‘lots of political vitriol’’ this year, with people wanting to ban ‘‘President Trump’’, ‘‘Crooked Hillary’’ and ‘‘Electoral College’’.

The top vote-getter was ‘‘echo chamber’’, with more than 500 submissions.

Another Michigan school takes the opposite approach. Detroit’s Wayne State University attempts through its Word Warriors campaign to exhume worthy words that have fallen out of favour. This year’s list included ‘‘absquatulate’’, which means to discreetly and abruptly leave a place, such as a gathering or party, without informing the host.