‘Claiming that I am a drag Queen or “performed” as a drag Queen is categorically false,’ tweeted the US Representative George Santos last week. ‘I will not be distracted nor fazed by this.’ ‘Wow, George Santos did something interesting!’ responded Stephen Colbert on the Late Show. ‘All his other lies are super-boring, like “I worked at a bank”.’
After yet another tennis match that went on into the early hours, Andy Murray’s brother Jamie said: ‘I’m sure you guys had to stay up super-late.’ Leicester is ‘one of two “super-diverse” cities in the UK’, wrote someone in the Guardian, while the Sun encouraged readers to ‘fill in the super-quick and straightforward three-step form’.
Super is on everyone’s lips, and it’s annoying. Yet it is nothing new. Someone in Seattle wrote in 2010 about a burger with a ‘super-artificial smoke flavour’, but superartificial has been in use since 1613.

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