No, this isn't a blogosphere tell-all about Facebook friends who turn on each other. Rather, it's a cheery tale about a word who struggled all year and was finally rewarded. The word? Unfriend. The reward? Being selected as the New Oxford American Dictionary's Word of the Year! If you're one of the 115 million monthly visitors to social networking sites, you already know the definition of unfriend. For the rest of us, it sounds rather ominous - like something that might be pasted onto a blank page and slipped through the letter box on a dark night:
Actually it's a verb meaning to remove someone as a social networking friend. There were other great words in the running for the Word of the Year. Here are some of my faves:
- intexticated - distracted while driving due to texting
- funemployed - turning your unemployment into something fun
- tramp stamp - tattoo on a woman's lower back
I didn't make these up - these are real words that have been added to the dictionary. Who knew? Thinking back to school days - can you use these new vocabulary words in a sentence? There are some nice possibilities . . .
On the tea front, yesterday I mentioned that I am trying different varieties of tea from Two Leaves and a Bud. Today I'm going with a Red Tea (a la The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) and a Peppermint Tea (because I'm feeling a bit tired). Over the weekend we'll chat about the teas I've tried thus far.
Hope you discover a few new words this week - maybe one that will become next year's WOTY!
And all this time I've been saying de-friend instead of unfriend! I guess it's because I associate it with defenestration.
ReplyDeleteChristine,
ReplyDeleteThat just shows that you're logical because defriend fits the meaning much better than unfriend. Perhaps whoever coined this word never studied prefixes??
I love the term intexticated... that fits the problem to a T
ReplyDeleteSandi - I love your soup - with a bigger bowl you could spell 'intexticated'!
ReplyDelete