Facebook’s “UnFriend” Word of the Year

New Oxford American Dictionary also legitimizes “tramp stamp”

We just tossed the rotten jack-o’-lantern and already New Oxford American Dictionary announces its “Word of the Year.” For 2009, that word is a verb, one which we in our social-network obsessed culture should be very familiar: “Unfriend: To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social-networking site such as Facebook.’ ”  

Let the harrumphing begin! And then put a sock in it, my friend. Language evolves. Civilization fails to end. It has been ever thus. There are 300 million plus users on Facebook -worldwide. Even if you and your spell-checker don’t approve of the NOAD’s newest verb “unfriend,” odds are, you’ve done it.

As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight,” illustrates the Oxford University Press blog.

As in, “One of the many ways to b**** slap someone on ‘Teh Interweb,’ ” as defined by Urban Dictionary, the official Web site of unofficial language where many a new word makes its debut long before Oxford and the other gatekeepers of the English language acknowledge nomenclature that comes to stay.

“(Unfriend) has both currency and potential longevity,” Christine Lindberg, senior lexicographer for Oxford’s U.S. dictionary program, said in the NOAD blog.  “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.”