If you’ve spent any time on social-networking sites--specifically Facebook--you’ve probably unfriended someone. Maybe it was a former significant other, a family member (probably your Mom or Dad, to be honest), or someone who you never knew in the first place. Whether you knew it or not, your unfriend now has a social significance.
According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, unfriend, which they define as “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook,” is the word of the year for 2009. According to the news release,Christine Lindberg, the Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary, unfriend “has both currency and potential longevity. In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year.”
In the news release, Lindberg notes that while most un-prefix words are adjectives (as in unpleasant) or verbs (like unpack), “unfriend” is unique. The word, according to Lindberg, is “different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of ‘friend’ that is really not used...Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”
Lex-appeal? Yikes. For its part, “unfriend” beat out “hashtag,” (the sign that helps Twitter uses find a specific posting--or “tweet” as it were), “intexticated” (pretty self-explanatory) and “funemployed” (taking advantage of unemployment in order to have fun). There were also terms pertaining to political popular culture, including “zombie bank,” “death panels” and “teabagger.”
For a full list of nominated words, go here.
Our Take
So we can pretty much all agree that this list is mostly silly portmanteaus, right? If that’s the case, then I’m surprised that nothing with “man” as a prefix made this list. Shouldn’t something like “mandals” or “manscarf” have made this list? Either way, unfriend is a pretty silly choice, considering that that the option to “unfriend” someone has been around since social networking itself--or at least Facebook. Also, isn’t the correct term “defriend”? Is unfriend really that recent a word development? Is there another word that would be more worthy? Let us know be leaving a comment.
