Why saying ‘no worries’ is a truly worrying trend

IT’S an expression used by younger generations in place of the perfectly serviceable phrase ‘you’re welcome’.

‘no worries’ has now been included in an annual list of sayings that academics argue should be banished for being ‘ineffective, baffling or irritating’.

They took particular aim at the Australian saying, which was popularised by the 1986 film crocodile Dundee.

Despite describing the phrase as ‘meaningless’, academics said that it now enjoys such widespread use that Google’s predictive text function even suggests users write it in emails.

After choosing from entries submitted by pedants across the globe, judges from Lake Superior University, in Michigan, also added the phrase ‘at the end of the day’ as well as ‘you are not alone’ to its top ten.

A contributor to the list said: ‘if i’m not worried, i don’t want anyone telling me not to worry. if i am upset, i want to discuss being upset.’

The US university received more than 1,250 nominations for bothersome phrases. University president rodney S Hanley said: ‘Say what you mean and mean what you say. can’t get any easier, or harder, than that.’ While last year’s list was dominated by phrases related to the pandemic, most of this year’s entries are conversational. Judges picked the phrase ‘wait, what?’ as the most offensive term, saying the two words should never be used together.

Widely used on social media, the panel said the phrase was misused and overused as a ‘response to a statement to express astonishment, misunderstanding, or disbelief’.

‘no worries’ was first recorded in 1965 in the Australian magazine, Oz, and experts say that the phrase became popular after the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and through the TV work of zookeeper Steve irwin. it is now widely used in both the UK and US.