If certain words and phrases make you cringe, you’ll appreciate Lake Superior State University’s Banished Words List for 2025.

It’s a tradition that started almost 50 years ago, when members of the school’s public relations staff began collecting misused, overused, or generally useless terms.

Today, people from around the world nominate their least favorites for inclusion on the tongue-in-cheek list. Dr. David Travis, president of the university, shared with WDET who decides what entries make the cut.

“We have a committee that even I as president don’t know who makes that committee up. It’s some of our professors and other individuals on campus, and they meet in secrecy. They review all the submissions. And we get them from all over the world, typically in the 1,000s and they go through the list, they look for the most popularly submitted ones,” he said. “I think they add probably a little bit of their own opinion on some things, and then a decision is made at the top 10.”

The list includes terms like “cringe,” which has evolved into a noun and verb, and “game changer,” overused beyond its sports context. “Era” is included due to its misuse in self-descriptive contexts, while “dropped” is overused in music and TV. “If you know, you know” is popular but often unclear. “Sorry, not sorry” and “utilize” are overused, and “skibity” is a global term — associated with skibity toilet videos on YouTube — that the committee aims to prevent from spreading.

“I’ve got a whole list of pet peeves myself, of words, and I will say, as president of the university that oversees the banished words list, I submitted several myself,” Travis said. “None of them made the list.”