Gobbledygook words

To round off this month of words of the year, banished words and annoying phrases, let’s take a look at a list of words that were once considered professional jargon, but are now in everyday use.

The most interesting (for me) of a list that includes contact, antibody and reliable, is interview.

3. Interview
While interview may have been a proper alternative to contact in 1931, people weren’t always friendly to it, at least in the sense where it means the asking of questions by members of the press. An 1882 book on rhetoric describes how this verb was “first accepted in jest, then violently denounced, and finally, by a strange fate, it appears to be accepted with mournful resignation.” In 1890, a New York Times article took to task the “newspaper fiends who have forced us to admit to the rights of citizenship the verb ‘to interview.'” (Source: Mental Floss)

Take a look at the rest of the list over at Mental Floss.