Columnist: Please Stop Misusing These 5 Words

Columnist George Will of the Washington Post is in a persnickety mood about the language, and he makes a plea in his latest column for people to give five misused or overused words a break. He calls out "massive" (when something doesn't have a physical mass), "iconic," "unique," and "only" (when used in the phrase "one of the only," because "few" is more succinct). But his biggest beef is with the word "vibe," which seems to be everywhere these days. He ticks offs headline after headline that uses some form of it, particularly "vibe shift."

• "It probably is used so often by so many because trying to decipher its meaning is like trying to nail applesauce to smoke," writes Will. "Having no fixed meaning, 'vibe' cannot be used incorrectly. So, it resembles the phrase 'social justice.' which includes a noun and a modifier that does not intelligibly modify the noun."
• Read the full op-ed, in which Will huffs that Shakespeare used nearly 30,000 words and never once resorted to "vibe."