AP Style - Hike

As I do the annual march through the new AP stylebook to prepare for the semester, I always find a few things you won't necessarily see in the summary of new and updated entries. But they have been so long ingrained that they probably are more significant than some of the changes the AP mentions.

If you are keeping track of falling shibboleths, this is the new language in the stylebook for hike, which for years was intoned against as a synonym for "to increase":

Hike: Acceptable as a verb for increasing or raising prices sharply.

There will be teeth-gnashing in some quarters, but like "host" of several years ago, this one probably was lost. However, it is just as appropos to remind ourselves that the word has come to be overused in some cases, and an occasional "increase" to break the drumbeat (hike does have a sharper tone) is not a bad thing. (I saw one story the other day that used "hike" four or five times in seven grafs. Too staccato to my mind.)

Will AP look at "another" next given that its style on that is so widely ignored?