I was watching a commercial and the word "epic" came up in the more recent slang-ized context of simply meaning very good/favorable, etc. and it got me thinking about words that have been more or less stripped of their actual meaning through colloquialism.
rock star(I know it's a phrase and not a word)-apparently sometime in the late 90s the word "celebrity" went on permanent vacation and "rock star" stepped in. It's bad enough when talentless hack top 40 acts that come from styles having nothing to do with rock use it but it's even worse when people completely unaffiliated with music at all are referred to as such.
ironic-get a thesaurus. Turn to the entry for "coincidental." Look in the list of synonyms. Notice the absence of the word "ironic"?
stalk-its verb tense used to mean to pursue something aggressively(even illegally at times.) People have had their lives severely affected by the mentally/emotionally traumatic fallout from this yet now whenever I hear someone talking about stalking it's some airheaded, self-important valley girl type who will usually start the "stalking" story telling about some ex-bf driving by their house a few times(which I do agree is weird and unacceptable) and I always call 'em out by asking the question, "so what happened when you called the police?" So far not one of the five to ten or so times I've found myself in one of these conversations did the girl say she did anything about it and I always hear them saying things like "I didn't want him to get in trouble" and one even said "but he was in law school"