'Unfriend' Named Oxford Word of the Year

[ssalim]

Oh a new one I hope:

"Oba Mao"

(recent news)

 

[Lord-Ilpolazzo]

This is ridiculous.. one of these days all these companies and organisations will look back at their jumping on the social networking bandwagon with the most unbearable cringeworthy embarassment and shame

 

[ssddx]

I have nothing against adding new words to round out the english language, however, I think we need to do better than this. Adding every slang word to the dictionary is only going to make people even worse when it comes to communication. I dread the day where we see "lol" "skool" and "roflcopter" in an official dictionary.

 

[acecombat]

Freemium and Zombie Bank take my votes!

 

[Guest]

who the ef uses "unfriend"?! Everyone I know in NY, SF, or LA uses "defriend" when mentioning they removed someone from their profile on a social networking site like facebook or myspace!

 

[matt87_50]

I would imagine a bank staffed by zombies would be more helpful...

also, how is unfreind even a word. no wonder the English language is screwed. "Oh some group of tweens said it? well they ARE the pioneering experts on the language, so it must be a word!"

does that mean that 'friend' is now a verb? meaning to become friends? we already have a word for that, its called 'befriend'.

so shouldn't it atleast be unbefriend? but then I suppose the people who define our language wouldn't be able to count the number of syllables in it...

also, social networking is lame.

 

[r0x0r]

Oxford forgot to include "camwhore".

Maybe a slang dictionary would be a good idea, because the best that we have now is Urban Dictionary and Encyclopedia Dramatica (don't search them if you're at work now...)

 

[killersav]

I have two words for general use:
yoring: adj. describes something that is so boring that it causes one to yawn
swait: vb. as in artisan's speak - hurry up and wait - only that one has to sit while doing so

 

[anamaniac]

[citation][nom]sstym[/nom]"Netbook – a small, very portable laptop computer with limited memory"Limited memory? So if I have a netbook and put a 4GB module in it, it ceases to be a netbook?How about "limited computing power"?[/citation]
What about ULV laptops that only have 1GB or memory? Also only like a 1.2GHz dual core, so also extremely limited processing power.

Funny regardless.

 

[Manos]

I love my Net btut I never liked so much Facebook and why i never use it. Seeing ppl talking more to their friends on Facebook than even the phone that got them lazy in the first place from meeting and having a coffee or a drink or watching amovie etc, now it movedto social networking and now our new vocabulary is words we make up from chatting etc. This is indeed rather depressing. They just made me hate this situation even more than before. Im greek and thank god we dont make up in greek new "online" words. From the only things left Im proud of as Greek I guess it can be adde to my limited list.... Still sounds sad from whatever aspect you see this matter.