“Unfriend” has been named the word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, chosen from a list of finalists with a tech-savvy bent. Unfriend was defined as a verb that means to remove someone as a “friend” on a social networking site such as Facebook. Other words deemed finalists for 2009 by the dictionary's publisher, Britain's Oxford University Press, came from other technological trends, the economy, and political and current affairs. In technology, there was “hashtag,” which is the hash sign added to a word or phrase that lets Twitter users search for tweets similarly tagged; “intexticated” for when people are distracted by texting while driving. Finalists from the economy included “freemium,” meaning a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, and “funemployed,” referring to people taking advantage of newly unemployed status to have fun. Others include “birther,” meaning conspiracy theorists challenging President Barack Obama's US birth certificate, and “deleb,” meaning a dead celebrity.
