New words to the wise... unfriended anyone lately? (From Bournemouth Echo)

New words to the wise... unfriended anyone lately?

8:00am Wednesday 25th November 2009 in

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If you are unfamiliar with social networking then you are probably also unfamiliar with the New Oxford American Dictionary’s “word of the year”.

But if you are a member of sites like Facebook or Twitter then you may have even taken part in it over the last few months.

“Unfriend” or the act of “unfriending” has beaten off competition from the likes of “funemployed” (enjoying being jobless) and “Deleb” (a dead celebrity) to become the most popular new word of 2009.

“Unfriend has both currency and potential longevity,” says Christine Lindberg, senior lexicographer for Oxford’s U.S. dictionary program.

“In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year.”

People all over the world have been unfriending on sites like Facebook for months – where it is more commonly and colloquially known as a “friend cull”.

If you have too many friends on the site then you simply delete the ones you no longer speak to or have no interest in speaking to.

Jon Symons, 24, from Bournemouth, recently trimmed his Facebook friends from 400 down to 150.

“One night I decided that anyone who hadn’t contacted me in two months was going to get deleted from my friend list.

“150 was just a rough target but I have a few more than that now – it was very therapeutic and actually quite satisfying.

“A person who sits next to me at work got culled, as did the girl who will be maid of honour at a wedding where I am best man. It was quite brutal.

“One girl I know from school got quite offended that she’d been deleted, but why should Facebook define a friendship?

“It’s a social network site and if you aren’t socialising with someone on it then why are you friends with them on it.”

While the act of unfriending is well known amongst the online community, the term used to describe it may not have become common place just yet.

“I know all about people deleting friends off Facebook as a lot of my friends have done it recently, but I've honestly never heard anyone say 'unfriend' in my life,” says Lola, a 27-year-old former Bournemouth University student now working in London.

“If someone you know from years ago adds you, but neither of you would say hello when you walk past each other on the street, then I’d say it is acceptable to reject their request or delete them.”

“I don’t do culls, I need all the friends I can get,” says 23-year-old Donald Polack, a Business Studies student at Bournemouth University.

Twitter, a social networking site popular with celebrities like John Cleese, Stephen Fry and footballers like Darren Bent, has also started to see a trend in members stop “following” other members if they don’t have anything interesting to say, or just don’t say anything for a long period of time.

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