NEW YORK - What word sums up 2009? How about unfriend?
Posted on - Tue Nov 17, 2009 9:09AM EST
That's the New Oxford American Dictionary's 2009 Word of the Year. It means to remove someone as a friend on a social networking Web site such as Facebook.
Each year Oxford University Press tracks how the English language is changing and chooses a word that best reflects the mood of the year.
Oxford lexicographer Christine Lindberg says unfriend has "real lex appeal."
Finalists for 2009 also included netbook, which is a small laptop, and sexting, which is sending sexually explicit texts and pictures by cell phone.
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20091117/ap_on_hi_te/us_odd_word_of_the_year
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ETA: Perhaps I should point out that I'm not a big meanie. What I find amusing about this is that, because there are now so many social networking sites, a word like "unfriend" came into being in the first place, and that it's apparently so widely used and accepted it's been added to the dictionary. Oh yeah, I'd say the English language is definitely changing, wouldn't you?
