Uncertain About Word-of-the-Year
Last month, the Oxford American Dictionary (Oxford American? How’s that for an oxymoron?) picked the word ‘unfriend’ as the Word-of-the-Year.
According to the dictionary, the verb unfriend means to “remove someone as a friend on a social networking site such as Facebook”.
This is a most unfortunate word, coming out of the unlovely side of social media. I am not unaware of the networking realities of Facebook and I am not unsympathetic to those not yet friended who are unhappily burdened with being unattached in a vast interconnected world. In that context, unfriending seems particularly unkind and makes friending in the first place an almost capricious exercise. Being thus uncoupled undercuts one’s sense of belonging and underscores the fleeting uncertainty of friendships altogether.
I am unsure of how the dons of the Oxford American Dictionary made their selection. Apparently, part of the appeal of unfriend was the rarity (unusuality?) of an ‘un’-prefixed word assuming a verb sense of friend, i.e., to friend, that is not used. You do not friend, you befriend. As such, says Christine Lindberg, a senior lexicographer with the dictionary, “unfriend has real lex appeal”.
Oh, really?
Among the contenders for the WOTY Award were a number of sniglets, including:
- intexticated - distracted by texting on a cell phone while driving a vehicle; and
- freemium - a business model in which some basic services are provided for free with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content.
There were the compound words and images, my favourite being ‘tramp stamp’, a tattoo on the lower back, usually on a woman. My only issue here is that I am sure tramp stamp is already several years old.
I also admit to being impressed by the seemingly endless stream of neologisms Twitter is contributing to the English language, many of which vied for Word-of-the-Year. If you don’t like the words, you at least have to love the chutzpah inherent in twitterati and twitterature. With such pretension, it is no wonder that people become tweetaholics.
In fact, the web contributed disproportionately to the lexicon in 2009. Sad, really, when you consider that the beauty and strength of the English language stem directly from the diversity of its sources.
The WOTY winner must “reflect the ethos of the year” and it must “have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance and use”. Unfriend, begat by the spread of social media, may well reflect the ethos and, indeed, the pathos of 2009. But as to having lasting cultural significance, I would think it most unlikely.
(For more on neologisms, please see: Don’t Snigger at Sniglets and A Case of the Twiggles.)
I think social networking has had a huge impact on many aspects of life. I don’t know if “friends” on Facebook can be considered the same as real friends, and I’ve been unfriended before. It is kind of weird, but doesn’t bother me too much unless it’s someone I thought was a real friend (which, thankfully, hasn’t actually happened).
On the other hand, I have used Facebook in my classroom. One assignment asked students to create a Facebook profile (using a Microsoft Publisher template because the real thing is blocked at school) for Christopher Boone, the protagonist of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. They loved it. I just ordered the book Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don’t Float: Classic Lit on Facebook from Amazon, and I’m looking forward to reading it. On the surface, I think things like that might be perceived as silly, but if you think about how much you have to know about a character to create a Facebook profile, it’s pretty hard thinking.
The verb “friend” is used… since 1225. “Unfriend” is pretty old as well.
“And I will friend you, if I may,/ In the dark and cloudy day.”
“Terence, this is stupid stuff”
Housman (1859-1936) probably wasn’t on Facebook.