The Bigly List of Words to Retire in 2017

Alas alack it’s that time of the year when we look back on our transgressions against the English language over the past 12 months and identify the words and phrases that simply must go.

This year, it’s not been a hard search: the presidential campaign offered rich pickings, in addition to the usual crop of gen x/y/z/millennial expressions that remain foreign to us 40+ folks (i.e. me) -- plus the usual handful of business/marketing buzzwords that stubbornly remain in use.

After a little crowdsourcing and without further ado, here is InkHouse’s list of words to retire in 2017 -- presented in alphabetic fashion because it seemed fairer than putting bigly in caps since so many people suggested it.

• Adulting
• AF
• Alt-right
• Bigly
• #blessed
• Brexit
• Fake news
• Fascism - Merriam-Webster’s contender for 2016 word of the year (but you can change that)
• Feels (as in: all the feels)
• Goals (as in: squad goals, relationship goals)
• Level set
• Leverage
• Lit
• Normalization
• Post-truth - the Oxford Dictionary 2016 word of the year
• Rigged
• Scary clowns
• Trolls (not the movie, the internet variety)
• Unicorn
• Winningest
• Woke
• Xenophobia - Dictionary.com’s 2016 word of the year

Word nerds, historians, anthropologists and fellow PR/marketing folks can view our past “words to retire” blogs posts over here: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011.