This article is from the archive of our partner .
Friday, The New Yorker launched a fun new game (and you know we love games from The New Yorker; the last page is the first we turn to, even if we've never won. Ever.) In this new gambit, dubbed "Questioningly," the editors pose a question for readers to answer by Facebook or Twitter. Clearly, there's a social media push to this plan; as such, you're supposed to use the hashtag #tnyquestion with any responses. The magazine's Ben Greenman writes, "The question will challenge you to provide a funny answer, though we will also accept answers that are witty, sharp, amusing, ingenious, or whimsical."
This week's question is interesting, and so New Yorkery:
If you could eliminate a single word from the English language, what would it be? Reasons can vary—overuse, etymological confusion, aesthetic ugliness—and need not be explained. Simply propose a word and append the #tnyquestion hashtag. We’ll consider them all, pick one, and then consult with the people who are in charge of the language to see what we can do.
But, wait a minute. As well as thinking of many, many words we would like to eliminate from the English language for reasons ranging from "yucky-soundingness" (aka "moist" and "fetid") to excessive use of letters ("antidisestablishmentarianism") to words that are way too cute ("tweeps"), there are the words we find all too often in The New Yorker itself. Despite the rest of the world having adjusted to certain "aesthetic standards" for these words, The New Yorker has not, often appearing as the last holdout at the very end of a linguistic war. So, we're asking our own question. If you could eliminate a single word from The New Yorker, what would it be?