Long-time readers may recall that I have ranted about words I hate in previous posts. To date, the list includes “slacks” and “whiff”. Fortunately, it’s highly unlikely I will ever have to hear those two words used in the same sentence i.e. “Hey man, come take a whiff of my slacks”.

The two words I am adding today are not actually real words, as far as I can tell. However, they’ve infiltrated the vernacular and are really starting to tick me off.

The first “word” is vajayjay. I did a little research, and apparently we have Grey’s Anatomy to thank for this abomination. It was used in an episode from February 2006 to spare us from the word “vagina”, and was quickly adopted by scores of pop culture celebs, including Oprah, Tyra, and Kimmel. I believe it was uttered no fewer than 18 times on an episode of The View, permanently scarring several audience members in the process.

A linguist (no word on whether he’s cunning) at Berkeley claims that vajayjay fills the need women have to adopt a pet name for their “special place”. If that’s the case, they need to go back to the drawing board. If they need inspiration, they can look to men. After all, we’ve come up with dozens of substitutes for penis – we certainly didn’t stop at “pee-pee”.

Next up is all words beginning with a lower-case “i”. Unless it’s a product created by Apple, “i-anything” should be banned. Even Apple’s use is starting to wear thin (iPod, iMac, iPhone, iTunes, iRan, iRaq, etc.)

In recent months, I have seen ads for iLoft and iSauna. I suppose marketing folks think they’re being hip by trying to associate their product with Apple’s reputation for design and innovation, but I think it comes off as desperate and sad. Jesus, people, it’s just another condo, it’s just a sauna, not a statement on your commitment to leading-edge technology.

So there you go, the list of banned words now includes slacks, whiff, vajayjay, and i-anything. Trust me – those are four words you really don’t want to use in the same sentence…