Tweets, sexting 'unfriended' in banned word list

KANSAS CITY: If you recently tweeted about how you were chillaxin for the holiday, take note: Fifteen particularly over- or mis-used words and phrases have been declared "shovel-ready" to be "unfriended" by a US university's annual list of terms that deserve to be banned.

After thousands of nominations of words and phrases commonly used in marketing, media, technology and elsewhere, wordsmiths at Lake Superior State University yesterday issued their 35th annual list of words that they believe should be banned.

Tops on the Michigan university's list of useless phrases was "shovel-ready". The term refers to infrastructure projects that are ready to break ground and was popularly used to describe road, bridge and other construction projects fueled by stimulus funds from the Obama administration.