The New Oxford American Dictionary made it's annual Word of the Year announcement on Nov. 17 on the Oxford University Press blog. And the winner is: unfriend.
Unfriend means to remove someone as a "friend" on a social networking site such as Facebook.
Example: I had to unfriend my roommate after we had a fight.
So, why is "unfriend" the 2009 Word of the Year?
"It has both currency and potential longevity," according to Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford's U.S. dictionary program.
Other words that were in the running for the top word in 2009:
- hashtag -- a way to unite global Tweets around some particular topic
- netbook -- a small, light and inexpensive laptop computer
- sexting -- when teens use their cell phones to send sexual messages and/or naked photos of themselves to their boyfriends or girlfriends
- funemployed -- being unemployed, and yet having lots of time to do fun things during normal working hours
- choice mom -- a woman who chooses to be a single mother
- deleb -- a dead celebrity
Any words you think should have been considered for Word of the Year?
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