A ban on saying ‘no worries’? They don’t understand

Every year, Lake Superior State University gets superior about words, seeking to ban rizz or sus, impact (as a verb) or slay (as an adjective). More tongue in cheek than hand on heart, the annual list identifies buzz phrases that have lost their fizz. Biz-speak on the nose, stuff like circle back, deep dive, thought leader.

Weary web-talk too, including iconic, artisanal and vibe. Here and there I’d dispute some choices. “Wait, what?” for one is handy. Ditto for side hustle and wheelhouse. Other nominations, however, should be buried without ceremony. So long, mouthfeel. Good riddance, optics. Take a hike, yeet.

Hakuna Matata: It means no worries!Credit:

Yet for all the slang the campus has scorned over the past 45 years, there’s been one phrase undeserving of its exile. Scroll the archive, from pivot to unpack, and the outlier jumps out. Listicle, I get. Curate, no argument. But how the hell did “no worries” get thrown into Lake Superior?

An article in The Guardian from Ann Ding alerted me to this injustice in 2022, and I’ve been stewing ever since. Slowly recovering in fact, only for Deb Chen to email me: “When did Australians start saying no worries (and no problem) instead of ‘You’re welcome’ or ‘It’s a pleasure’ – and why?”

Drinking milk to ease my old ulcer, I took a beat to consider Deb’s question. That’s when the answer arose, not to Deb’s question, but why Lake Superior’s disdain for “no worries” was so misguided. With respect, Michiganders have no grasp of the phrase’s nuances, its idiomatic subtext as outlined in Deb’s email.

Dear America, no worries doesn’t mean no worries. Anxious as you guys, Australians deal with stress on all fronts, from climbing rent to soaring mercury. Your wildfires equal our bushfires. We fret over World War III, AI tendrils and forever chemicals. Every day we worry, which is why we say no worries, because manners still matter.

Other nominations, however, should be buried without ceremony. So long, mouthfeel. Good riddance, optics. Take a hike, yeet.

As Deb suggests, the phrase is idiom, a piece of phatic (or conversational) liturgy to make the wheels go round. I give you a coffee. You say thanks. I say no worries (all the while agonising over a mygov message, but that’s beside the point). Lake Superior’s jurors don’t want the phrase because they don’t get it.

Maybe the issue is translation. No worries, on paper, would suggest no problems, but really it’s closer to “not a problem” singular. Fetching your coffee was a doddle compared with my current insomnia. Sydney’s Oz magazine is deemed the phrase’s early generator, back in 1965, later boosted by Mick Dundee and Steve Irwin, the Sydney Olympics, and now the Oz influencers in LA, from Margot Robbie to Bluey Heeler.

Amid that tide was the red herring of Lion King in 1994. Hakuna Matata may mean no worries in Swahili, but that’s treating the phrase as a carefree manifesto, not a reflex sweetness. Perhaps America needs to ignore the warthog, block out the meerkat, and treat no worries as a social fib. The Poms get it, suckled on Neighbours, but Americans still struggle.

I’m not sure why. John and Jane Doe, after all, gave our language no sweat, no biggie, all good, too easy – each phrase a throwaway nicety rather than a shrink’s diagnosis. No worries sits in a similar basket, but somehow Lake Superior is all at sea. On second thoughts, maybe they should ban the expression, as their undergrads don’t deserve it. Not yet. Maybe when they’re older.

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