If I had one wish it would be this: That American Pie was never made and ergo, that I didn’t ever have to hear the word MILF ever again. MILF has reached a troublesome level of prominence. I seem to hear it every time I speak to another human being. The word is ubiquitous, and with each utterance it saps my will to communicate with other humans. This is why I have developed am ingenious plan to wipe it entirely from the English speaking world (but more on that later...)

The power of the screen should never be underestimated. More than the tides, more than the stars, the screen has the power to influence the course of our lives. The screen influences how we think, how we dress, and what we eat. The screen also influences the way we speak.

MILF isn’t the only word that had been brought to popularity by the screen. Over the years films and television have coined, displayed, popularised and legitimised various neologisms into the popular lexicon, and just like the words invented by Shakespeare, some of these have gone on to enjoy longevity.

The Simpsons are responsible for several significant contributions to the language. Along with the obvious phrases (“D’oh”), other terms like “cromulant” and “embiggen” are often used ironically. There are also other, lesser known terms like “dungeonarium” and “shirkaday”, all of which are listed comprehensively in a marvellously entertaining index of Simpson’s neologisms. (It was with particular delight I read about Mr Burn’s telephone greeting “A-Hoy-Hoy” which was apparently the greeting suggested by Alexander Graham Bell for answering his new invention, the telephone. We've all been doing it wrong).

Entire languages have been invented for the screen, such as Klingon and Na'vi (not a great deal of this has found its way into everyday English). It should also be noted that a language has been invented for describing and discussing film by Variety magazine, known as "slanguage" or "varaityese", many words of which have found their way into popular English like “striptease”, “punchline”, and “grindhouse”.

There are films and television shows that have given existing words new life, introducing them to an audience that might otherwise be unfamiliar with them. The Princess Bride did much for the word “inconceivable”. I know I can safely blame the widespread use of the word “sporadically”, during my high school years, on its use in Clueless, and likewise the theme song for The Nanny taught us young naïve Australians that “fanny” means something quite different in America than it does here (or else that Americans bend in anatomically peculiar ways).

Getting excited by words is perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of. One only has to spend a week on the internet to see how quickly a new phrase or term is taken up and bandied about. New words not only provide us with new and better ways in which to express ourselves, but form our identity. With each new word we are smarter, cooler.

It is my personal wish for this word-greed to be harnessed for the greater good. I dream of a world, you see, in which everyone is a word-smith; in which the man and woman on the street are each as articulate as Oscar Wild and stimulating conversation is traded like the valuable commodity it is. It is our collective hunger for new words and the screen's power to influence that will enable me to implement my ingenious plan and make my dream come true. My ingenious plan is two-fold (it's so ingenious!):

Firstly, We introduce more films with unusual titles that might provoke word-curiosity. Inception was a good start and the upcoming horror film Insidious will fit pleasingly within this strategy. Even if the average punter does not appreciate fully the true meaning of the title they may at least become familiar with the new word itself. If the tone and plot of the film in question match the title, we may at least TRICK the average movie-goer into using the word. In the same way a teenager might refer to a doomed love affair as being “soooo Titanic”, if Hollywood marketing departments open up their thesauruses, we may look forward to a more diverse vernacular beginning to seep through.

Secondly, within each of these films we place a character who is reprehensibly daggy; totally inept, uncool, and over-the-hill, and provide them with lines  designed to eradicate the least desirable phrases in our current vernacular. Just like Ian Thorpe assuring the children in the cereal ad that their breakfast was “fully sick”, these painfully uncool actors will take words like MILF, taint them by association, and make them undesirable and unusable. Phrases I would like to see obliterated in such a manner include “random”, “good times”, “chillaxed”, “so hot right now”, and “hells yeah”.

With that I shall sit back in my leather chair and place my fingertips together, pour myself a brandy, and wait patiently for my ingenious plan to come into fruition. We'll have those peons talking good yet!