I love language. I love learning (and using) new words – as you might be able to tell from my post about the word “joyance”. I love my Dictionary.com app that sends me a new word every day. Some words are familiar, and some are not. Today’s word was “elevenses”, which is British slang for a midmorning break. Yesterday’s word was “neoteric”, which means modern; new; recent. A few days ago the word was “champers”, which is slang for champagne – a timely word for the new year!
Thanks to Inside Higher Ed and Lake Superior University, we have a list of words or phrases to banish from the lexicon for 2019. The list includes “optics”, “thought leader”, and “importantly”. I’ll leave it to the clever amongst you to put all three into a sentence.
On the plus side, Inside Higher Ed and Wayne State University also provide us with a list of words to use in 2019. Here is a brief selection from their list:
Anecdoche or anechdoche. This word doesn’t show up in any of the three dictionaries that I have in my office, but the Google machine finds it in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, “a compendium of invented words”. The definition? Anecdoche occurs when everyone talks at once, listening to no one. Have you attended any meetings like that?
Logorrhea. Logorrhea describes excessive, compulsive talkativeness. Do those who suffer from logorrhea show up at meetings that turn into an anechdoche?
Trenchant. Trenchant means incisive, keen, clear-cut, sharply defined. The world could do with more trenchancy (noun), couldn’t it?
As we start 2019, raise a glass of champers, say farewell to optics and hello to trenchancy. 
Cheers, all.
Steve Ryan from Groveland, CA, USA [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons