10 adjectives to kill.

We love adjectives in the word business -- we find them helpful, handy, illustrative, connective, important, and indispensable. (SWIDT?) But let's face it, there are some that have overstayed their welcome. I mean those adjectives that have risen up in the popular culture and dominated it, becoming the lazy lingo for magazine, TV, Internet, and pop novel writers. They have generally become meaningless from overuse, or ruined from improper use, and need to be killed. Some could be put on ice for a few decades while to recover their strength, but others must die.

Here's ten that need to go away for a long, possibly permanent, sleep. Feel free to add more in comments.

Awesome -- A particular weakness of mine, I'm sorry to say, but one that is well overdue for a big sleep. Comedian Bill Engvall had a whole bit and even a song about the use and abuse of awesome 18 years ago. It's a great word but come on... no more awesome for a while.

Badass -- I've written at some length about the horrors and stupidity of badass, as a noun and an adjective, and yet it persists. It sullies the person using it and the subject of the use, especially if they are one and the same. Grow up and drop that word.

Kickass -- Just another badass. Unless you're actually going to apply your foot to the behinds of your enemies, which I will remind you is a felony in most states, don't use kickass.

Woke -- As I wrote before, honestly, "woke"? Are toddlers leading this thing? Webster's has allowed it now but that's because they have no standards at all anymore.  The people still using it seem to want to be taken as serious and intelligent, but that's hard when you sound like an addlepated dimwit. 

Sexy -- A favorite of the least-sexy people working in industries like magazines, marketing, and probably mausoleums, and in general for a lot of things far removed (one hopes) from sex. Even when used for things supposedly connected to sex, they are often used in a way that makes the potential people who would react to such sexiness utterly repelled. "This 96-year-old great-grandmother of 35 is still super-sassy and downright sexy." No, she's not, and neither is her 98-year-old husband. Thanks for ruining a perfectly good word. (While we're at it, let's kill sassy too.)

Dope -- Maybe it sounded cool when used by genuine poor kids in bad neighborhoods, but it's being used by middle-class blockheads in graduate school. Let it die. Besides, dope (the noun) kills. I've buried a couple.

Bloody -- Do real British people use this anymore as an intensifier? If so I suppose they may continue, but no American should be caught using it. Not because it's cultural appropriation but because it's pretentious.

Fake -- Nothing wrong with fake except its current popularity with the noun news. Often fake news is just news I don't like. But really there is plenty of news reporting that is not grounded in truth, and for those cases a more descriptive adjective should be used. It could be misleading, if truth is used in a misdirected way, or does not give a complete picture (it could also then be cherry-picked). If facts are not presented properly it could merely be inaccurate. It might be poorly researched if based on spurious information, or for that matter spurious. Or it could be a fabrication or false if it has no basis in truth at all. Fake is just a playground word.

Racist -- Orwell wrote, "It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless" because by 1944 it was being applied all over the place as a pejorative. "Racist" is trending that way, and then some. Until recently, racist meant someone who hates others of a different race, which is an incomplete definition but is an accepted meaning. Now it is used for people suspected of disliking any class of people. People who dislike or distrust Islam are racist, even though the people who follow that religion are of all races. People who notice that there are different races among the children of men are racist, unless they are using race distinctions for identity politics or self-segregation, in which case they are not. In other words, racist essentially means someone I don't like. Better let it rest for a while and look for more accurate words. (-phobe is another disaster, but that's a suffix, so I'm not touching it today.)

Implicit -- "Capable of being understood from something else though unexpressed," says Webster's, which has led to its misuse as an adjective. Implicit is the lash used to strike the innocent, frequently seen in the company of racism. "You are racist, even though you do nothing explicit to demonstrate it, but you have implicit racism" -- despite the fact that there's no "something else" from which this racism may be "capable of being understood." I refer you to Andrew Ferguson to dismantle this construction as it deserves. Good words ought to make things more clear, but once they are used mostly to make things murky, it's time to let them lie fallow for a while.

These are my findings; you may certainly disagree, and you may have plenty of other adjectives you think should be smothered with a pillow. Feel free to contact me in the comments or via frederick_key at yahoo dot com. That'd be awes... nifty.