The New Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year for 2009 is unfriend, which they define as “verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”
Huh. I feel like “unfollow” is the more common term, but maybe that’s because I’m more of a Twitter/Tumblr person than a Facebook/MySpace one. (Perhaps this is the new Myers-Briggs? Yes?) According to the dictionary’s blog, other terms that were under consideration include hashtag, sexting, funemployed, and birther. Again, why am I alone on preferring “texxxting” to “sexting”? Mine is so much catchier!
In any case, congratulations to unfriend. Would you have picked something else, PopWatchers?
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My friends and I all call it “defriending”.
that’s what I call it also. It sounds more grammatically correct, even though it’s a fake word.
Yeah, defriend is what I use, too.
Yup, I’m going with defriend. Who says unfriend?
Me too. I defriend. I’ve never unfriended.
I have never unfriended someone. Now, defriend I do that all the time.
That’s what everyone I know uses as well. I’ve never heard “unfriend” used.
Facebook has over 200 million members. Twitter has about 6 million. I’m gonna go with Oxford on this one.
And Twitter traffic is down 15 percent in the past two months. Even Twitheads are getting sick of one another.
I’ve never heard of “unfollow”, but I don’t do Twitter. “Unfriend” is pretty common, I think.
PS: I think I like funemployed! Margaret, I like “texxxting”, but it loses its impact when it’s spoken, whereas “sexting” gets the point across either way.
Birther can’t go in there, it’s way too topical. It could be completely forgotten about in a year (one can only hope). At least it’s possible that words like “unfriending” along with social networking as a whole, is here to stay.
Talk about too topical… last year it was “hypermiling”! Who uses that anymore? For that matter, who ever used it in the first place?
I just say removed so and so from my facebook. I’ve done it to several people and it’s happened to me too.
ha. me too. I never thought it would require a seperate word. But I agree that Oxford jumps on new words too quickly.
It’s “defriend”. They got it wrong.
I’ve used “unfriend” and “defriend” interchangeably. I think all their choices were kind of dumb, actually; they all seem way too niche-market. I think “unfollow” would have been even more esoteric to the vast majority of people. And Margaret, stop trying to make “texxxting” happen! “Texxxting” only works in print; when you say it out loud, it loses all its meaning! It’s “sexting,” mkay?
I use unfriend all the time so yay for Oxford!!
who says “unfriend?”
everyone i know says defriend.
EW, write a follow up article, because seriously, they were totally off here.