We ought to banish more words

Why do people say: ‘You might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment’? Are they using it as they would a Shakespearean quotation such as: ‘The lady doth protest too much’? Or do they think that by speaking the line made famous by Ian Richardson in House of Cards, they generate wit anew so that some rubs off on them and cheers the conversation?

I wondered whether I was encountering second-hand humour from some television series when I began to notice the phrase Wait. What? It tends to be used archly, as though for an invisible audience. My husband finds it used on X, that social media platform for the elderly. Sometimes it is accompanied by a gif of a kitten or someone from Friends emoting scepticism.

It is the verbal equivalent of a double take. There seems to be no television origin for it, but it is no less annoying for that. So it was some consolation to discover the phrase on a list of banished words issued annually since 1976 by Lake Superior State University at Sault Ste Marie in Missouri. (Sault Ste Marie in Ontario is separated from it by St Mary’s river.) I think the banished words list started as a means of attracting publicity, along with the pleasing tradition of setting fire to a snowman on the first day of spring. The snowman is made of paper.