We love start-ups. Believe us, we absolutely do. And we fully support the efforts of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Groningen, Eindhoven,  XXX (fill in any Dutch city here), to become the start-up capital of the universe.

It’s all hugely innovative and disruptive, of course, but we are becoming just a little bit tired of the clichés. Here is a list of 10 bits of start-up related lingo that we never want to see again.

Awesome – possibly the most over-used word in the start-up galaxy. We get the message, you are all awesome

Amazing – see awesome

Word play and puns involving App – What’sApp is enough. Appsterdam? Please no.

Upvote – the process of attempting to fix online polls in favour of your start-up by asking everyone in your social media system to vote for you – because you are awesome, or possibly amazing. Upvoting also renders all polls completely useless.

Hack – used in so many ways it has become meaningless. We see the word, we’re  hacked off.

Interns  – especially interns who are expected to become ‘head of visual design’ or ‘take charge of marketing and communications’ for pocket money, a pat on the head and the glory of being exploited by a company with a silly name.

Disruptive and revolutionary – is your takeaway dinner app or your online taxi platform really going to change the world order? We don’t think so.

Lean – another way of saying you have no money and you only exist because no-one is getting paid.

Describing yourself as a start-up when you have been around for years and years and raised millions of dollars in funding. It’s time to grow up.

Startup deltas, networks, portals, weeks and academies – when they have the helping hand of local government behind them. Amsterdam council is planning to launch a billboard and poster campaign as part of its ‘Startup City Branding’. Oh god.

And if you think we are being snarky about government involvement in the start-up scene, check out this video from Startupdelta.org. We especially like the cowboy feature film music.