Lake Superior State University has released a list of words and phrases to avoid using because they’ve been overused and lost their original significance. Among them are ones I’d expect to see – “Throw him under the bus”, “x is the new y”, “post 9/11”, “surge”, etc. “Webinar” is in there too, which is kind of surprising as I’ve only seen the word in print a couple of times and have never heard anyone actually say it.
Suspiciously absent from the list was the tiresome “at the end of the day”, a staple these days on TV and in print alike, especially among political pundits. At the end of the day, if you’re going to use “at the end of the day”, you’d better be talking about something that’s actually going to happen at the end of the day.