new

   Perhaps no word appears superfluously in text more often than new, as in each of these examples: "New chairman named at Weir Group" (Financial Times headline); "Yet another Steven Spielberg film seems poised to set new records at the box office when it opens next week" (Chicago Tribune); "The search for new breakthroughs seems to have spurred extra spending in recent years" (Newsweek). Scientists would hardly be searching for old breakthroughs, nor a film poised to set old records, nor a company naming an old chairman. Nearly always the sense of newness is implicit, and the word can be deleted without loss. This rare double from the New York Times shows at a glance just how vacuous the word often is: "New boom for Florida creates new concerns."