At the end of each year, a multitude of lists are published with words and phrases to stop saying in the new year. Just Google “words to stop saying in 2017” to see the many lists published last December for this year.

You’ll find many of the same ones on multiple 2017 lists – words and phrases like “lit,” “can’t even,” “fleek” and “literally” show up on pop-culture websites, whereas Forbes listed “change,” “connection,” “engagement” and “development” as words that have lost their impact and should be replaced in the business world.

With the first quarter of the year closing out today, the Obsidian team created our own list of words and phrases we’ve determined we’re tired of and want to see retired in 2017 – both for our personal and professional lives.

We’d love to stop hearing our friends, family and other acquaintances saying:

• Amazeballs
• Awesome-sauce
• Cuffing (as in being tied down in a serious relationship)
• Turn up
• How ’bout that (how bow dah)
• Keep Calm and [enter anything here]
• Slay
• Hack (as in “life hacks”)

In our business worlds, we’d love to see these words and phrases go away:

• Disrupter
• Let’s connect/reconnect.
• Let’s make a splash./We need to make a splash.
• Expound
• Angle (as in a media/news story angle)
• Intentional
• Innovative
• Press

For more insight on our choices, here are a few fun, additional comments from our team:

On turn up: “This phrase was catchy/trendy when it first came out, but I’m kinda over it. If we’re not talking about turning up the AC or something, then I can do without this one.”

On keep calm and phrases: “This really should have died years ago, but every time I turn around someone else has made a new ‘Keep calm and [do what I say]’ meme or T-shirt. STAHP. PLZ.”

On slay: “It works for a Beyoncé song, not for everyday conversation.”

On make a splash: “Do you mean you want to jump in a puddle or a swimming pool together?”

On angle: “I make a conscious effort not to use ‘angle.’ Maybe I hated geometry that much in high school, but calling a story idea an angle makes me feel like I’m trying to force something that isn’t actually newsworthy or isn’t actually relevant.”

On Innovative: “It drives me crazy when people use ‘innovative’ to describe their new product/project. Unless you invented a flying car, there’s nothing innovative about it.”