Hashtag, twerking and selfie: Most annoying words of the year

The words "selfie" (taking a photo of one's self), Obamacare (the nickname of President Obama's Affordable Care Act) and "twerking" (a provocative dance style made famous by singer Miley Cyrus during her MTV VMA performance) made the 39th annual List of Words to be Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness from Lake Superior State University.

The list is compiled from nominations sent to LSSU throughout the year and then released each year on New Year's Eve. Dating back to 1975, when onetime LSSU public relations director Bill Rabe and colleagues came up with the idea to urge banishment of overused words and phrases from the English language.

According to the LSSU Web site: "Much to the delight of word enthusiasts everywhere, the list has stayed the course into a fourth decade. Through the years, LSSU has received tens of thousands of nominations for the list, which is closing in on its 1,000th banishment."

Other words included in the list this year include: "hashtag," "Twittersphere," and "fan base," as well as overused suffixes such as -ageddon and -pocalypse. Coincidentally, the words "twerking" and "selfie" also made it into the Oxford Dictionaries in 2013.

:story: c|net