[lg policy] Oxford UP words of the year

[Harold Schiffman]

The Unfriendliest Cut of All

Language puritans who never got used to the casual verbing of the noun
"friend" on Facebook now have a new abomination to contend with: The
Oxford University Press has named "unfriend" as its 2009 word of the
year.

A quick scan of the list of also-rans for the annual honor suggests
that the word, which describes deleting someone from a list of
contacts in social networking, is an apt choice for these contentious
times. A sampling of the other nominees and their definitions:

birther – a conspiracy theorist who challenges President Obama’s birth
certificate

death panel – a theoretical body that determines which patients
deserve to live, when care is rationed

deleb – a dead celebrity

teabagger – a person, who protests President Obama's tax policies and
stimulus package, often through local demonstrations known as "Tea
Party" protests (in allusion to the Boston Tea Party of 1773)

tramp stamp – a tattoo on the lower back, usually on a woman

zombie bank – a financial institution whose liabilities are  greater
than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government
support

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/The-Unfriendliest-Cut-of-All/8877/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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