The Lost Meaning of Words

Some of the best ideas come when you’re lounging around in your socks. Not in the shower, but during something mundane. This idea struck me (and Leigh, too) at the kitchen table: certain words need to take a long break starting in 2025. These overused words have lost their impact, leaving readers numb to their meaning. Their overuse reveals a bigger issue in how language is used across marketing and media.

Marketing Words Targeting Emotions

We see them everywhere. Words so overused and misapplied they’ve become hollow. I’m not a linguistic anthropologist, but it’s clear writers didn’t plan for this. Repetitive marketing drained these words of meaning. Instead of genuine emotion, we see shallow attempts to spark an easy sale. Think about where you’ve seen these words:

• Evil
• Hero
• Fatal Mistake
• Unprecedented
• Epic
• Literally
• Explosive
• Bombshell

Each of these words has been subjected to semantic bleaching, robbing them of their original power.

Semantic Bleaching: The Death of Definitions

Journalists and marketers stripped these overused words of meaning by churning out content with emotional labels rather than information. Headlines and clickbait rely on these terms to box ideas into neat packages for a brand’s agenda but at the cost of their relevance. Busy consumers bombarded with these words, accept them without question, turning powerful language into empty shells.

The result? A meaningless parade of buzzwords constantly recycled and reused. This isn’t a critique of modern journalism, though. It’s not about how opinion masquerades as news, where anyone with a blog could claim to be a journalist. Instead, it’s about communication. Words once carried history, intention, and value, but misuse has left them flimsy today. Semantic bleaching of words has reduced their value in communication. Let’s take a closer look at some specific examples, starting with the word “evil.”

What Does Evil Mean Anymore?

The word evil traces back to old Germanic roots. Horror movies built entire genres on this term because it reflected a shared moral framework. From lifeless undead hordes looking to consume to the immoral worshipers of darkness, hell-bent on the destruction of the world. Evil rooted its way into entertainment as a dopamine hit of jump scares. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, evil once described as disease, misfortune, or depravity, was always tied to a value system that evolved over time.

Today, in media, we toss evil around to describe everything from a heinous crime to someone we disagree with. The reverence this word once commanded has eroded into something trivial. The same erosion applies to the word “hero,” which has now lost much of its meaning.

Hero Has Lost Its Shine

Unlike evil, the word hero irks me. It’s everywhere, and it’s meaningless. Doctors? Heroes. Teachers? Heroes. Soldiers? Heroes. Even someone eating a ham sandwich? This is the only one that is a hero in this shortlist. I mean the ham sandwich, of course. America has a hero-worship problem. We overuse the word hero so much it now applies to everyone and no one at the same time. Here’s an opinion from 2007 in the New York Times as an example.

The original Greek word, ἥρως (hērōs), described someone extraordinary, like Hercules. Today, the hero rarely aligns with Merriam-Webster’s definition. Instead, it’s become a participation trophy for existence. Heroes are as mass-produced as the ball-point pen, quickly hailed and just as quickly disposed of. The word lacks gravity now, similar to the phrase “fatal mistake” which is next.

Fatal Mistake Gets Overplayed

Fatal mistake should pack a punch, but it’s become a cliché. We see it plastered across headlines and YouTube thumbnails, often describing minor errors. Creators label every misstep a fatal mistake, watering down its meaning to the point of absurdity. While some fatal mistakes truly qualify, like Darwin Award candidates, this phrase has been so overused that it’s lost its gravity. The same can be said of “unprecedented,” a word that rarely lives up to its name anymore.

Unprecedented Is No Longer Unique

Unprecedented only applies the first time something happens. Once it becomes routine, it sets a precedent. Yet marketers keep insisting that ordinary events are unprecedented, making the term feel stale. Even as a pattern or series of epic happenings, it’s no longer unprecedented, since the precedent was set by an event already. This leads me to another point, that while it may be a grand event, it also might lose being epic for the same reasons.

Epic Is Just Beige

Epic once described grand and heroic feats or remarkable stories. In the modern day, we see epics in films like Star Wars or books The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. That’s not the epic I’m talking about. Using “epic” as a descriptor attached it to the most mundane experiences. Instead of impressing anyone, this word has the same impact as beige paint in an eggshell-colored room.

There are plenty of epic examples that can be given. There are a series of marketed events like this article from Zoho, demonstrating the literally not-so-epic. Let’s not forget the word “literally,” which has undergone perhaps the most ironic shift of all.

Literally An Overused Word That Means Nothing

Literally used to mean exactly or precisely. Today, it also means not literally. Somehow, this overused word now contradicts itself, bouncing between exaggeration and exactness. The result? Total confusion. Other words like “explosive” suffer from a similar lack of impact or literalness.

Explosive Has Burned Out

Explosions are exciting, but describing everything as explosive has dulled its effect. Marketers slap it onto headlines to grab attention, yet most content doesn’t deliver the promised boom. Likewise, the word “bombshell” misfires more often than not.

Bombshell Misfires Every Time

Like explosive, the word bombshell has become a hollow exaggeration. Writers throw it into headlines for shock value, but the actual content rarely delivers. This brings us to a broader reflection on how language evolves over time.

Words Drift Over Time

Words evolve, but overuse words that are misused speed up the declining value of a word. In technical and scientific writing, I carefully choose my words to maintain accuracy. A single misplaced synonym can derail meaning and undermine my expertise. Whereas in media, writers use words to evoke emotion, not precision. Constantly hammering audiences with emotionally charged terms robs these words of their power. Stripped of meaning, they fade into white noise.

Endless waves of junk bombard consumers daily, turning buzzwords into a tool of exhaustion. Every headline screams for attention, framing everything as the next big crisis. Consumers, overwhelmed by one-minute videos and sound bites, find their attention spans shrinking. This steady erosion of meaning spreads across media and infects everything it touches. The solution is simple: let these words rest in peace.