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UNSHOCKED: 'Friend' as a verb has history
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Published: November 29, 2009
Updated: 11/28/2009 07:20 pm
Have you friended anyone lately? You probably have if you have joined Facebook, a social networking site on the Internet where you can connect and correspond with people in your life.
When you friend someone, you accept him or her into the group of people with whom you choose to correspond. What if you grow tired of some of the people you have friended and want to be rid of them? Simple -- you unfriend them.
This use of friend and unfriend has become so common that the New Oxford American Dictionary has named unfriend the Word of the Year for 2009. It defines unfriend as a verb meaning to remove someone as a friend on such social networking sites as Facebook.
When I first heard of friend as a verb, I thought it was a new usage born in this age of the Internet. Not so. The Oxford English Reference Dictionary lists it as an archaic or poetic word meaning to befriend or help someone.
The use of unfriend as a verb set me to thinking about the line in the Lord's Prayer that says, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." What do you do if you have forgiven someone and then change you mind?
Do you unforgive him? Why not? It's only a notch above (or is it a notch below) unfriending him.
The Journal recently had a story about a state senator who said she would not run again. A secondary headline on the story said, "She wants to put family first; new baby is on the way."
A Winston-Salem reader has asked: "Does anyone ever have an old baby on the way?"
Robert Linnell of Winston-Salem has commented on some recent item in this space. He wrote:
"Are we conflicticized about whether we have a problem with the issue issue or an issue with the issue problem? Of course I jest and agree wholeheartedly with your position.
"Most recently, we experienced the failure of a product to behave as advertised. So I sent an e-mail to the customer-service organization for the product. My first sentence said, ‘We have encountered a problem with (the product).' I went on to describe the symptoms.
The first sentence of the response was: ‘This is a (specific) issue.' There followed some helpful information.
"Arrrgh!
"In conclusion, and for the sake of brevity, I will not talk about ‘the bottom line.'"
From Kim Hinshaw of East Bend: "I hope you can stand one more comment about adding ‘ize' to various words. A few weeks ago NPR had a story about how hotels were trying to cut costs. A maid being interviewed said she was being ‘pressurized' to clean rooms faster. I had a laugh picturing her being inflated like a car tire to speed things up.
"I didn't think much more about it until a few weeks later when a news anchor at our local television station used the same word in the same context.
"Just one more step in the end of civilization as we know it."
B.P. Weir of Brighton, N.Y., has been having fun with some pronunciations. She wrote:
"When I mistook H1N1 for HINI, I called it heinie, with a smile. I soon heard it pronounced hinny, like whinny. Nonsense. With one N, it (should sound) like bikini, martini, panini, tahini and zucchini, or like tiny, thus heinie….
"On the Urban Dictionary Web site we read: ‘hini (pronounced heenee), a shortened form or nickname for referring to the H1N1 strain of swine flu.'
"Will hini (pronounced hinny, heinie or heenee) make it into a dictionary? How about piggy virus as a nickname for swine flu?"
Richard Creed is a retired Journal editor. He can be reached at
richcreed@triad.rr.com
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