Word of the Year 2009: Unfriend

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I start off my book The Peep Diaries by noting that the 2008 word of the year as identified by the Webster’s New World Dictionary was Overshare. (Read the original blog post here.) Now the new Oxford American Dictionary has stepped up to the plate to preach the new lexicon of Peep to the linguistically inventive masses, giving us Unfriend as their 2009 word of the year. (Lamely, Webster’s went with Distracted Driving as their word of the year…is that even a word? It’s more like a phrase…regardless, it’s not catchy and it won’t last.)

Unfriend, of course, is the term we use when we drop someone from Facebook. It’s a word remarkable for its brevity, cruelly, silliness, utility and ambiguity. Were they even your friend in the first place? Probably not. We unfriend when someone we’ve invited to our broadcast breaks the (unstated) rules of peep. For instance, if some loser from junior high starts posting pictures of me at 13 years-old wearing my seer sucker suit, white leather shoes and oversized plastic framed glasses then it’s unfriend time. And detag time, too. (Ah detag…an excellent candidate for 2010, me thinks…)

Also in the running for this year’s prize: sexting.

Well that concludes the peep vocabulary lesson for this year.

ps– plenty of discussion in the blogosphere regarding the choice of unfriend…here’s a link that links to various bloggers opining…

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The Bloggist

Hey, I’m Hal Niedzviecki. I’m a writer/thinker who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with my wife and daughter. Up till now I’ve always considered myself a private person. But at the same time I’m fascinated by people who effortlessly open themselves up to the whole world. So I’ve… more...

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