Word Crimes

The fact that language is living and ever-evolving is a good thing, or we'd still be speaking the King's English and sound like extras in a community theater production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Words fall out of use and are replaced by new ones, and language adapts to the needs of its users.

Evolution aside, I need to rant about the word crimes that are currently raising my hackles at my day gig. Going to work for the state, I was prepared for a certain amount of business-speak, and of course, the non-stop acronym parade, but the following is just. Too. Much.

Report out. When did this little gem come into popular use? Can't we simply report results? Why must we report them "out"? Out where? We report for duty or report to a particular location; did someone just pick "out" for the hell of it? I'm aware of the trouble many people have with those pesky prepositions, but come on...

Change champions. How anyone can use this term with a straight face is beyond me. "Change agent" was bad enough, but this? The only upside is Queen popping into my head.

Listicle. This one has been around for quite a while apparently, yet I'd remained blissfully unaware. Dictionary.com defines it as "a published article structured in the form of a list, typically having some additional content relating to each item." That sounds like what it is, and given our shrinking collective attention span, I get it, but it just sounds wrong.

Agreeance. What on earth was wrong with "agreement"? I'm just going to stubbornly refuse to accept this one, no matter what Merriam-Webster has to say.

A colleague saw me roll my eyes at listicle and when I said it was a silly made-up word, his response was that all words are made up. That may be true, but I have my doubts that anything on this list will stand the test of time. If only I could actually cite people for word crimes...