December 10, 2009: Issue 318
Editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary have chosen unfriend as their word of the year for 2009.
If you’re scowling at the base word friend used as a verb, know that Web 11 says it’s legit. So yes, grammatically, you can friend and unfriend someone. (Many grammarians blame Facebook for the decline of the traditional befriend, but that’s not really fair. The Facebook button says “Add as Friend.”)
An also-ran for word of the year was hashtag, meaning the # sign used to indicate a keyword in a tweet. We’ll treat it the same way Oxford does: one word, solid.
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