I love these pointless little declarations about the English language from companies like the New Oxford American Dictionary. Every year I keep an eye out to see what the new word of the year is, and every year it’s something that, well, I figured already existed. For example, the big word this year was unfriend, as in removing someone from your Facebook friend list. Make sure you add that to your word processor’s dictionary now.
Unfriend is basically adding a prefix to an existing word, so I’m not sure how it counts as word of the year when you have legitimately new words entering the lexicon like netbook, sexting, paywall, and hashtag. Considering that there seems to be a pretty big fissure between those who say unfriend and defriend for the definition, “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook,” it’s clear that unfriend is causing a lot of controversy.
Personally, I would’ve gone with netbook. It’s an entirely new category of consumer electronics device that didn’t exist last year. Much like the iPod before it, these extra-small, energy-efficient, subcompact computers are becoming the must-have accessory for college students and others who need to work on the go.
Tags: word of the year, unfriend, Facebook, Twitter, New Oxford American Dictionary, dictionary word of the year, new words, language trends, social networking
