It鈥檚 WOTY season
The Monitor鈥檚 language columnist wonders how anyone can pick just one Word of the Year.
In the true spirit of Christmas, which impels retailers to deck their halls with boughs of plastic holly while the Halloween candy is still on display, lexicographers start announcing their picks for Word of the Year before Thanksgiving.
The New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD) has named its Word of the Year for 2009: unfriend. As a verb it means 鈥渢o remove someone as a 鈥榝riend鈥� on a social networking site.鈥� The choice of a word related to social media was not surprising. What did surprise some, though, was the choice of an essentially negative word.聽
Richard McManus, a technology blogger who is editor of ReadWriteWeb, commented, 鈥淎ll the trends indicate there has been more social networking activity this past year 鈥� not less (as 鈥榰nfriend鈥� implies). Facebook and Twitter have rocketed in popularity.鈥�
Another interpretation might be that social media have caught on to the point that people must cull their online 鈥渇riends,鈥� perhaps by trimming them back to include, oh, I don鈥檛 know, maybe only people they actually know. Or does that sound too 2008?
NOAD could have chosen friend, but that would have had to be explained: friend as a transitive verb. 鈥淚 friended him on Facebook.鈥� That鈥檚 not the same thing as 鈥淲e became friends鈥� or 鈥淲e made friends.鈥� The American Heritage Dictionary lists friend聽as a transitive verb, but tags it 鈥渁rchaic.鈥� Befriend聽goes back to the mid-16th century, and presumably covered the same ground as make friends.
There鈥檚 a whiff of difference, though. Befriend聽is what someone does to someone else, as a kindness. An older couple might befriend an impecunious student. 鈥淢aking friends鈥� sounds more reciprocal.
The WOTY at Webster鈥檚 New World Dictionaries is distracted driving. Webster鈥檚 New World makes its choice to call attention to cultural changes. Editor in chief Mike Agnes has commented that this new phrase has led to initialisms such as DWD, driving while distracted, or DWT, driving while texting. 鈥淲e鈥檙e building up a whole semantic cloud around this social and now legal issue.鈥�
Merriam-Webster, another dictionary publisher, has taken a different approach. Rather than focus on what one blogger called 鈥渘ovelties,鈥� M-W makes its choices on the basis of actual user look-ups. Its WOTY for 2009 is 鈥� brace yourself 鈥� admonish. Rep. Joe Wilson (R) of South Carolina was 鈥渁dmonished鈥� by his House colleagues this year after he exclaimed, 鈥淵ou lie!鈥� during a presidential address.聽
The Merriam-Webster list tends to reflect the words that come up in the news stories of the year. The list is of words that writers use because they鈥檙e exactly the right word 鈥� admonish聽has a precise meaning in Congress, for instance 鈥� and then people must look them up to find out what they mean. Distracted driving聽may be a new term for a new umbrella concept, but any English speaker in the United States will understand it at once.
That doesn鈥檛 mean distracted driving聽is without lexicographical interest. Editor Agnes called it an example of hypallage. It rhymes with analogy, and comes from a Greek word meaning 鈥渋nterchange.鈥� It鈥檚 a literary device that lets you get away with saying things that are not all that logical. It鈥檚 not the driving that鈥檚 distracted; it鈥檚 the driver. Likewise, in the case of a 鈥渃areless remark,鈥� it鈥檚 not the remark but the speaker who is careless.
I don鈥檛 know about Word of the Year, but I鈥檝e got a new Word of the Week.