reported by Aggie Villanueva

Hey gang, it’s WOTY time! What, you ask, is that? It’s when Oxford University Press announces the Word of the Year. Before each year’s holidays The New Oxford American Dictionary celebrates a new word that permeates our language until it becomes vernacular.

Without further ado, as proclaimed at the OUP Blog, the 2009 Word of the Year is: unfriend.

Unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.”

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program. “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. Most “un-” prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar “un-” verbs (uncap, unpack), but “unfriend” is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”

There were lots of lexiconic rejections before awarding “unfriend,” as the Word of the Year, such as “intexticated – distracted because texting on a cellphone while driving a vehicle,” and “brown state – a US state that does not have strict environmental regulations.”

Check these out and much more, like the word clusters surrounding “twitter,” at the OUP Blog.