Category: English Language Education

When you’re running a few minutes late for dinner with friends, are the first words you say to the table, “I’m so sorry, I should have left earlier,” even though no one is upset? Do you feel the need to apologize several times and worry you’ve offended someone when you share your opinion in a group discussion? How about accidentally bumping into someone in a crowd?

Even as a therapist, I tend to say sorry more than I should. It’s a natural reflex, especially if you’re a people pleaser. Finding healthier and more intentional phrases is the first step toward being more intentional about how you communicate. Try practicing these phrases instead!

1. Thank you for your patience

2. I appreciate your understanding

3. Let’s find a solution together

4. I hear you—I’m going to do things differently in the future

5. I’ll take steps to prevent this

6. Thank you for the feedback, it’s important to me

7. I understand where you’re coming from

8. Let’s move forward constructively and address this together

9. This didn’t go as planned

10. I know you’re hurting right now; how can I help? 

There’s a strong and powerful connection between how we convey our thoughts and self-esteem. Replacing unnecessary apologies with more intentional, meaningful statements is the start to ending the over-apologizing epidemic and reserve saying sorry for when it truly matters. 

Article by Morgan Bailee Boggess, MSW, CSW for Parade©

Photo credit: wayssay.com

CEMSELVI/GETTY IMAGES

So what made the cut for winter 2024? Here’s a list of some of our favorites, along with Dictionary.com’s definitions:

• Barbiecore: An aesthetic or style featuring playful pink outfits, accessories, decor, etc., celebrating and modeled on the wardrobe of the Barbie doll.
• Sustainable fashion: A genre of clothing and other fashion products intended to reduce negative impacts on the environment through the use of ecologically responsible materials and manufacturing, the promotion of longer-lasting style trends, and the popularization of product reuse.
• Circular fashion:A type of sustainable fashion that promotes minimal manufacturing through the ongoing reuse of garments and accessories or their components.
• Eco-chic: Of or relating to a style, design or product that is attractive and fashionable as well as eco-friendly and sustainable.
• Slow fashion: A movement among clothing producers and consumers that emphasizes eco-friendly, well-made clothing, maintenance and repair of garments to extend their life span, and a general reduction of one’s consumption of new clothing items. (This is the opposite of fast fashion.)
• Shacket: A garment in the style of a button-down shirt, made of a thicker fabric and usually worn over other shirts.
• Cozy: Relating to a genre of mystery stories with little suspense, explicit violence or sexual content, often also having amateur sleuths and idyllic, intimate settings. (This new dictionary word can also be used as a noun when referring to the story itself.)
• Girl dinner: An often attractively presented collection of snacks that involve little preparation, such as small quantities of cold cuts, cheese, fruit, cherry tomatoes, etc., deemed sufficient to constitute a meal for one.
• Pretty privilege: An unearned and mostly unacknowledged societal advantage that a person has by fitting into the beauty standards of their culture.
• Worlding: The act or process of bringing a people, culture, nation, etc., into a global sphere of influence, especially the sphere thought of as dominated by Western countries.
• Ensh*tification: The gradual degradation of an online platform or service’s functionality, as part of a cycle in which the platform or service first offers benefits to users to attract them, then pursues more and more profits at the expense of users.
• Food insecure: Having or characterized by limited or uncertain access to adequate food.
• Climate breakdown: The collective effects of harmful and potentially irreversible trends in climate, specifically those resulting from unchecked global warming.
• Fire tornado: A flaming tornado generated by intense wildfire, rarer, much larger and more destructive than a fire whirl.
• Energy poverty: A lack of adequate access to safe, affordable sources of electricity or fuel for warmth, light, cooking, etc.
• Extreme heat event: A heat event classified as being excessive enough to pose a serious threat to public health.
• Global boiling: A nonscientific term used to emphasize the trend toward and severity of extreme heat events, especially in regard to public health.
• Greedflation: A rise in prices, rents or the like, that is not due to market pressure or any other factor organic to the economy, but is caused by corporate executives or boards of directors, property owners, etc., solely to increase profits that are already healthy or excessive.
• Kennel cough: A highly contagious but usually mild respiratory infection in dogs, characterized by a dry hacking or gagging cough and caused by a number of bacteria and viruses.
• Skiplagging: The practice of purchasing an air ticket for a flight with a layover at one’s true destination, getting off at the layover point and skipping the last leg of the flight: a workaround to avoid paying a higher fare for a direct flight to one’s destination.
• Sound bath: An instance of sustained listening to the pleasant sounds emanating from a collection of singing bowls, bells, chimes, etc., used to aid in relaxation or meditation and believed to help restore physical and mental wellness.
• Prebiotic: A substance containing dietary fiber that stimulates the growth or activity of beneficial bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract.
• Turf toe: A sprain at the joint between the metatarsus and the phalanx of the big toe, caused when the ligament connecting them under the toe is overextended: typically a sports-related injury, originally associated especially with artificial grass surfaces.

Article by Mariah Thomas for readersdigest.com©