Fwd: My vote for word of the year: unfriend

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:15 AM -0700 9/24/08, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>a WOTY suggestion.
>
>Begin forwarded message:
>
>>From: Stewart Haddock <SHaddock at web.com>
>>Date: September 23, 2008 8:18:35 AM PDT
>>To: "zwicky at csli.stanford.edu" <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
>>Subject: My vote for word of the year:  unfriend
>>
>>Hello,
>>
>>I just read your post about the LOL cats on Karen Baumer's Facebook
>>page and it got me thinking about the word 'unfriend'.   I do not
>>know how one chooses the word of the year, but 'unfriend' is one
>>that I have used a lot this year and I never seemed to use before.
>>
>>Stewart
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

I see two problems.  One is that "defriend" is even more established
in the same use, more specifically 'remove from one's LiveJournal
friends list' or more generally as an antonym of "befriend" (see the
first few entries on google's collection of 24,900 hits, or the entry
in the Unwords Dictionary (http://www.unwords.com/, slogan "Changing
the English Language One Word At a Time").  The second is that
there's also a noun "unfriend" (sort of like an enemy, but maybe not
a sworn one).

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org