"Baby bump" is among the terms put on the banned list by a US university in its yearly attempt to improve the English language.

Other expressions deemed beyond the pale linguistically are "shared sacrifice" and "win the future".

Michigan's Lake Superior State University is featuring those phrases in its latest List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness.

The 2011 list was compiled by the university from nominations submitted from across the globe.

The syntactical Scrooges also want to cast out "occupy", "amazing", "man cave" and "the new normal".

In all, a dozen words or phrases made the 37th annual end-of-the year list. It started as a publicity ploy by the university on New Year's Day 1976, and has since generated tens of thousands of nominations.