crutch word
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.90 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "2012 Jen Doll, ""A Literal Epidemic of Crutch Words," The Atlantic, 13 September 2012. Of course, we didn't list all the crutch words, because it appears we're living in a crutch word epidemic."
- "2016 O'Brian Gunn, ""Crutch Words that Hobble Your Writing," BKA Content, 29 December 2016. A crutch word is essentially a placeholder, something we say or sometimes even write when we can’t think of the right word to accurately describe what we want to convey."
- "n.d. ""Words That Can Ruin Your Sentence: Actually," Dictionary.com: Everything After Z, 13 September 2012. Actually is the perfect example of a crutch word. It is meant to signify something that exists in reality, but it is more often used as a way to add punch to a statement (as in, "I actually have no idea")."
Etymology
From crutch + word.