The English Language Gets Facebooked

The reign of social media lives on as the New Oxford dictionary (“The world’s most trusted dictionary) named ‘unfriend’ the word of the year. Yes, as in: “Some whack-job keeps invited me to play Farmville so I unfriended his lame ass.” Another point for Facebook, and another hit to society’s overall intelligence. To ‘unfriend’ someone may be the ultimate diss on the interwebs, but in reality, Oxford is just verbing a noun.

By Brittany

To make matters worse, other finalists for the word of the year included: sexting, intexticated, tramp stamp and deleb. For those not as in the loop as the New Oxford word of the year panel, deleb is defined as a dead celebrity. I, for one, have never heard the word ‘deleb’ used in everyday conversation, but what do I know? I’m still over here thinking the correct term was to ‘defriend.’ Embarrassing.

While these words are culturally clever and all, I can guarantee word-enthusiasts all over the world are groaning right now. I’m just wondering how long it takes before ‘WTF,’ ‘LOL’ and ‘UR2GR82B4GOT10’ get their moment of glory. Also wondering how long it will take my spell check to realize ‘unfriend’ is legit now. Seriously, what is this proto-language and where do we come up with it?