Each year the The New Oxford American Dictionary announces a Word of the Year. For 2009, that word is Unfriend, although spell check on my end still seems to be a bit confused on the matter.

unfriend verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.”

It’s a very appropriate word for a year in which we’ve seen the social networking scene literally explode with activity and popularity. Other contestants for the WOTY were netbook, sexting, freemium, and hashtag – all notable buzzwords, but do they really deserve consideration for official dictionary status as a word?

Our language is constantly evolving and within it exists a churning factory of neologisms that are pipe-lined directly from our pop culture. They change rapidly and what is considered acceptable now is passé when the next new thing arrives, which could be right now.

There will always be a next new thing. There will always be words and phrases we use today but will scoff at tomorrow (e.g., cowabunga, rad, da bomb, fresh, whack, psych – to name a few). We use it now but unfriend could eventually become as lame as booyah or bling-bling, homey. The New Oxford is constantly adding words to their dictionary that seem fleeting in nature and I’ll probably just count this one among them.

Something also to consider is what this says about our culture. Do we really need a verb that devalues it’s root noun? Sure, the New Oxford definition implicitly associates the word with the social networking site Facebook, but should we be afraid of how our younger generations may perceive friendship because of sites like Facebook? Will they view friendship in the fickle terms of here today, gone tomorrow and never invest heavily in nurturing friendships? How will that impact them developmentally?

I guess time will give us the answers, but it’s something worth considering. For now, I’m going to go and unfriend anyone who isn’t reading this blog. Nah, just kidding. I may have people on my Facebook friend list that I don’t talk to a lot or maybe even at all, but at some point in my life each one of them has contributed to and helped define who I am today. Maybe it was in the smallest way, but I still value them and gladly call them a friend.

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