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Sorry Oxford, it's 'defriend'

It seems the general public lacks a consensus about the proper way to refer to expunging a digital friend, but academia has spoken.

The Oxford American Dictionary made big news this week when it announced "unfriend" as its word of the year. "Unfriend" gained notoriety as a word to refer to deleting someone as a friend on a social networking site such as Facebook.

But wait just one minute. Many Facebook fans were quick to say "isn't the word 'defriend?'" — as in "I can't believe Brad defriended me when we broke up" rather than "I can't believe Brad unfriended me when we broke up."

Even Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes admitted he would have gone with "defriend."

“I was surprised that that was the word that they’ve chosen,” Hughes told The Post-Standard in Syracuse, New York, before speaking to a community college.

While Oxford tried to incorporate the evolving technological lexicon, it looks like it might be difficult to find uniformity. So, is it defriend or unfriend? ... Or unimportant?

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Social Media Examiner

Ellie Behling is a journalist in New York City and has used social media extensively in her career, including a blog she started for Generation Y...

Comments

  • Beverly Bright - Green Country Budget Events 2 years ago
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    LOL! It's "unimportant" to me.

  • Ellie Behling 2 years ago
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    haha I'm sure many others are uninterested (or is it disinterested? ... JK).

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