What words do you want to retire?

When it comes to buzzwords, there are a few whose time is up

I’ve been thinking a lot about retirement lately. Not so much about my own, but the retiring of certain words and phrases from our professional lexicon—ones that are overused, tired and simply wear me out.

Here are several candidates I’d like to see leave the building, for good:

Key. Everything’s key these days. Key initiatives. Key plans. Key priorities. Do we really need to classify a priority as key? I once came across a memo where key appeared in a single sentence three times. The entire memo, comprising but eight sentences, had a grand total of 13 keys. That’s an average of 1.62 keys per sentence. Unless it’s being used as a noun or to refer to that guy who wrote The Star-Spangled Banner, let’s consider putting a lock on key.