Subscribe to HotForWords
E-MAIL
by pressing send you agree to our privacy policy

Nerd Word of the Day.. no YEAR: Unfriend

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

The New Oxford American Dictionary has chosen this word as the 2009 WORD OF THE YEAR!

Runners up included hashtag (I like that one), intexticated (did it already :-) ), sexting (ditto).

Unfriend really does have a lot of meaning though, though it does seem a bit Facebook-centric, right?

You’d better be nice to me or else Imma let you finish, then Imma gonna unfriend you!

Click here for more nerd words.

Tags:

Order My Book

28 Comments and 4 threads

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

  1. Dear Marina,

    Everyone text me and says that I looked so [discussd] :grin: at school. I don’t get it. I think it’s some kind of shortening of discusting. What? I’m confused. You’re are so much better at it than me, so what does it mean, and it should be the nerd word of the day!

  2. brynhild84 says: 12

    Hi Marina,
    I am an assistant teacher for English in Austria. I just wanted to say thank you for all the ‘Nerd Word of the Days’° I did a lesson with them, in honor of the OEDs Word of the Year with my adult students, it worked great, really got them interested and thinking about how to use words in English :cool: !
    Love your videos!:smile:
    Aaron

  3. fglrx says: 11

    Imma gonna unfriend you

    If Imma is an abbreviated form of I’m gonna, then Imma gonna must be a little bit pleonastic, isn’t it? :)

  4. tonyb says: 10

    I GOT THOWN OFF OF FACEBOOK! Maybe their christian fiction writers who were my friends were really not my friends. Some of them writer women got really snotty to me as well!! I am an INDEPENDANT THINKER and an INDEPENDANT WRITER. No one accepts me in theit churches!

  5. bsomebody says: 9

    Unfriend sounds so sad. :cry: I got some pretty cool friends from here. :cool: Thanx, M’Lady for inviting us to your playground. :grin:

  6. bobsully says: 8

    so “unfriend” is the word… sign of the times perhaps, or folks who have reached a broad enough circle. it seems rather sad.

    I didn’t know what a hashtag was till just now. You learn something every day.

  7. macnewsbuzz says: 7

    Yes, already posted “Unfriend” is Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year – http://bit.ly/1KcgYZ (via @mashable)” by Lammerding.

  8. MARINA PLEASE DO THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD [SOLES] AS IN SOLES OF THE FEET

  9. pedanticKarl says: 5

     
    Marina, yes, hashtag (#) is an interesting one.
    The word hashtag has blanketed the Google
    database with the association to Twitter. :shock:

    I wonder how many people know that the hashtag
    used to be / is known as the pound sign or number sign?
    Most people, even the older generation gives me a
    blank stare when I tell them to press the pound key.
    They have no clue where it is on the keyboard. I guess
    they never took typing classes.

    In Unix/Linux shell scripting it is used as a comment
    and is also used in various ways in programming and in
    CSS it is used to designated an ID and also designates
    a hex number for colors (ex: #F0A503)

    Very versatile little symbol.
    Don’t change your name though, HotForHash
    as that ampersand thingy didn’t work out. :lol:

    • I use to use the # sign for my business cards to save space. I also use it for passwords.

      Many people don’t take any form of typing instruction. I see hundreds of people that do the hunt an peck method. I myself took typing in high school for I was going to be a computer programmer and many programmers used H&P typing. Some of them even hired a typist because it would be faster.
      It drive me crazy we still use Qwerty keyboards. Oh well, keyboards are on there way out.
      Funny, I just realized I sometimes don’t even read the screen when I type. I’m watching the news while I type. I only look back to fix my typos. Weird that I know I missed typed a word and I’m not even looking at the screen.

    • Hs4Mm says: 5.2

      I think the symbol # is just hash. Hashtag is the symbol hash in a specific usage: it’s use as a tag to tag certain words in tweets.

      The kind of thinking that resulted in the word hashtag would result in words such as hash-comment (for # in csh, perl etc.), slash-comment (for /**/ or // in C)!

      The exclamation symbol !, based on its use in comics, is also called shriek and bang.

      The hash symbol, #, is also called sharp from its use in music. The name sharp in turn results in some people calling the # symbol shh (as in the sound of shushing someone).

      The combination “#!” when used at the beginning of files in Unix to let the OS know which program to run on the file is called (by combining shh for # and bang for !) shebang.

      • Hs4Mm says: 5.2.1

        PS: I’m currently watching Forbidden Planet (1956) in which a key character (Walter Pidgeon) is a philologist, and geek-scientist (or “Renaissance man” a’ la’ Michelangelo). This, together with the preceding comment (involving #-comment and #!) reminded me that perl, a language I love programming in, was invented by a linguist! (I also enjoy programming in C and various assembly languages, but writing perl is very enjoyable since it is just like writing and thinking in English using complete sentences.) Back to the paused movie.

    • Hs4Mm says: 5.3

      PPS: Twitter uses hashtags to mark keywords … the HFW site uses [square-bracket-enclosing-tags] to mark origin requests!

  10. leonard says: 4

    Is this like the “un-cola”, 7-UP? :cool: …nerds and geeks are the good derogatives… :lol: :roll: Nuts are rather large…Original 7-Up “Un-cola Nuts” ad…lets all act friendly!!!

  11. pedanticKarl says: 2

    Imma second and imma nice.
    I better not bring up the friend thing,
    cause Rijk will get me to be friends
    with you know who. LOL :lol:
    Can’t get unfriended if you aren’t a friend :-)

  12. Che Mero says: 1

    Here!!

    Yes, It’s been a while since we had a Nerd Word.

Author: HotForWords

Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes