epicentre should be centre Epicentre comes from geology and assumes a three dimensional region.
disinterested uninterested. Unless the person is being disinterested, that is unbiased. Thanks Kris
at this point in time now Thanks Dicey
ramp up rise
spiral up (or down) rise (or fall)
decimate reduce Decimate literally means reduce by one tenth. From Latin.
iconic perhaps characteristic. Thanks Stache
utilize use Thanks Lost
simplistic simple Thanks Dicey
marginal slight
marginally slightly
significant higher or lower Significant has a meaning in statistics, so if A is different from B by more than 5%, this difference is seen, usually, as a significant difference.
baby bump is OK, being descriptive. In Australia we sometimes use ‘preggers’ Take your choice.
Strunk and White Elements of Style has an excellent spoof of bureaucratic language by George Orwell, who wondered what the superb passage from Ecclesiastes 3:1-9 would look like if translated into bureaucratic language. ‘There is a time for everything’, written about 1200 BC. Immortal language translated into nonsense, and worth the price of the book by itself, but the Kindle edition is free.