Alanis Morissette Was an NYT Crossword Clue This Week, and It Made Me Think About How No One Talks About How 'Ironic' Is Not Really Ironic Anymore

And other overused words that annoy us as much as flies in our chardonnay

Wow, the response from all of you very dedicated readers last week about overused words was awesome! Epic! Amazing! Phenomenal! Iconic!

And today I want to talk about the words we hate because they have very specific meanings that have been diluted through overuse — or misuse, as in the case of the Gen-X classic “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette.

As I mentioned in the headline for this here column, Alanis Morissette, along with “Jagged Little Pill,” the album that contained “Ironic,” was a clue in the NYT crossword last Friday.

Mostly, this made me feel old, because I am absolutely going to do to a bunch of words in this newsletter what the people who were old in 1995 did when “Ironic” hit the airwaves. Which was to write lengthy think pieces in old-people magazines about how Morissette misused the term ironic and what she meant was that rain on your wedding day and 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife and winning the lottery only to die the next day are coincidental.

Those old people in 1995 were right, of course, but that fire station has burned down (that’s an actual example of irony, if you care and you aren’t currently karaoke-ing around your living room to Alanis). Thirty-three million “Jagged Little Pill” albums sold to date and now we all throw around ironic with our hands in the air like we just don’t care.

A bunch of y’all mentioned words that annoy you for the same reason that “Ironic” grated on the souls of English majors everywhere. They are words — mostly adjectives, a couple of adverbs, which is to say, descriptive words — that should be used sparingly, to describe very precise circumstances, but that through overuse have lost much of their impact.

Here are some of those words, along with your comments.

Obsessed

”Obsessed, to describe one’s love of a product or service. Everyone is obsessed! When did this become a positive thing?” — Laura

Draconian

“Draconian has been beaten to death and drug through town behind a horse [in the media].” — Rebecca B.

Literally

“It makes me think of a UK soccer pundit who would say things like ‘his head literally exploded after that goal’ or ‘he literally flew across the field.’ — Emma

“I literally hate literally.” — Rob

AF (for the uninitiated, a less salty abbreviation for the saltier “as f*ck”)

“Saying something is ‘AF.’ Example: on a friend’s 40th birthday she said she was ‘40 A-F.’ What does that even mean??” — Gretchen

OG (Along the lines of AF above, this once meant “original gangster,” then got the Alanis treatment by Ice-T, and now tech bros everywhere use it as a synonym for “first.”)

“What does that even mean anymore?” — Elizabeth

Triggered

Lauren, Kym, and Coughlin all mentioned this one.

Addicting

Kris gave this a shout-out.

Traumatized

“Yes, there is trauma, and it comes in the Big T and little t forms. But, honey, you're not traumatized by a bad wax job.” — Sarah

Epic

“Enough said.” — Kara

Perfect

“Is anything really perfect?” — Hadley

Paradigm

“I'm (almost) at a point where I'd prefer the Juan de Fuca Tectonic Plate* shift than another ‘paradigm.’”

* A little dark humor for all you Pacific Northwest seismology fans out there.” — Bethany

Awesome

Malecia is bugged by this one. I agree, primarily because it slips out of my mouth all the time, even in work emails.

Iconic

Another Malecia submission (Malecia’s a copyeditor, so she knows from overused words) echoed by Rebecca C.

Amazing and Stunning

“So few things actually are.” — Amelia

If you don’t see your name here, never fear! I can almost guarantee you’ll show up in a future overused-word newsletter. To those of you who responded to me last week, thank you thank you thank you!

And let’s try to use more of our words and in more creative ways this week.

I want to mention here, but pretend that it’s in very very fine print: I have started a subscription plan for this newsletter. For the foreseeable future, I will continue to make all my content available to all of you. But if there is interest, I hope to create additional content that will be just for paid subscribers. Big ups to my first founding member, Kelly, and those of you who have already chipped in as paying subscribers! You all rock. I mean that in an utterly unironic way :).