The Un-Dictionary

A language is like a person.

It is born with the combined traits of its heritage. It has an infancy, it grows into adolescence and maturity, and many eventually grow elderly and pass on.

A language has quirks and imperfections, traits of its personality that take some getting used to, that require a certain affinity, and that conjure for some an understanding relationship that is downright elusive.

A language evolves with its environment, adopting traits to help it survive.

A language needs caretakers to see it grow and shepherds to guide and guard its numbers.

A language can go bad if not properly tended to.

In 2009, the English Language officially invited its one millionth word into the fold, which I believe marks its 'Google' anniversary. In recent weeks a new word was added, by the New Oxford American Dictionary, taken from an action coined in the popular Facebook social networking super-website.


The word: 'unfriend'

Within the context of Planet Facebook it describes removing someone's account from your 'friendlist'. In this digital realm the term has likely been used as much as any valid word, as anything within a light year of this site is riding a wave of relevance that is certain to someday dwindle as fast as it came. Outside of the context of Facebook this word is pointless. I will concede that in this world pointlessness can always be redefined by popularity. Popularity should never be the last word.

"It has both currency and potential longevity," said Christine Lindberg, senior lexicographer for Oxford's U.S. dictionary program, in a statement.
It appears in this case, that Facebook instead has the last word.

We're all the caretakers, the shepherds, and the keepers of this language; this genetic dynamo, this amalgamation of European cousins, this Olympic gathering of words and nations. Past generations have drawn it to greatness, poets and wordsmiths have made dance and sing, and we the current stewards are shirking our duty.

We are raising a monster. In our term of service, our maturing child has grown into one of those goth zombie ne'er do wells, that seems to excel while being neglected by their parents and society, finding new ways to offend and revelling in the complacency of those who should seek to make them better. This lexicon deserves more.

We are forming un-words. We are propagating a divergence by favouring fashionable convention. Facebook and Twitter and social networking as a medium cannot become more important than the means of communication fuelling it. An art form reflects society while interpreting it, thus propelling its advancement.

'Unfriend' is by no means the first of these unnecessary, fashionably buzzing un-words. It seems that every season there is a new action associated with the next marketing mutant phalanx that earns a seat in one of our dictionaries, o a spot on Oxford’s Friendslist, as it were. These colloquialisms seem to get their tickets by means not by their validity or heritage or succinct description, but through ubiquitous (ubiquitous: defined in Patricktionary) popularity. A marketable hybrid of two sellable products, such as ‘sexting’ or ‘freemium’, or a certain mama grizzly’s highly ‘refudiatable’ ‘refudiate’, do not belong in the same book, at the same table, or on the same list as exalt, paramount or loquacious. All that buzzwords earn from me are quotation marks, which hopefully denote their fleeting significance and shorter existence.

It seems like wake-riding marketing, a promotional angle, which is so unneeded and superfluous. After all… more marketing? English is out there, guys, with a solid customer base. We don't need to advertise.

A word coronated by popularity is an exploitation of the power of democracy. Votes from the populace should determine holders of office and directions of state. They should not be used in focused markets or special interests to form public opinion or make decisions that should be directed only by fact.

Have you ever watched a cable news channel use one of their own online polls, answered by the very viewers waiting to be informed, and employing an expert, known only as ‘expert’, to back up their own editorial argument? They then inform their viewership with a colourfully charted diagram of their own opinion, furthering their scripted news marketing.

It is thus un-information. It is the essential folly of modern perception. It's a shit sandwich in Reuben's clothing. It's someone of authority abusing your trust, a doctor prescribing you bad medicine, a mechanic putting bad parts in your car, and being popular rather than adhering to the responsible ethic of their craft. That’s essentially what is happening when a word enters the lexicon through the bathroom window. We can't 'unfriend' our handy-dandy Oxford Dictionary. Perhaps there is a way that the hallowed book of words can manoeuvre the tightrope between trend and institution.

We can't 'unfriend' our handy-dandy Oxford Dictionary. Perhaps there is a way that the hallowed book of words can manoeuvre the tightrope between trend and institution.

We should have a special provision for our buzzwords. They can be part of an official document like an asterixed record from a steroid-enhanced professional athlete. They can have their place, under a gilded halo.

Colloquialisms and buzzwords are perfectly acceptable additives to our conversation and our culture. They can be a touchstone, a drawing on a cave wall, or a sign of the times. Some hippies humming "koom-by-yah" in an annoying drum circle, a douche bag grunting "groovy" from atop platform shoes or Bart Simpson cranking out "aye carumba!" have perfectly valid place in our society.

That place is fashionable, and outside of our formal dialect. We have come thus far with a perfectly agreeable unwritten writing rule: colloquialisms, expressions, euphemisms, and profanities add character to the outdoor voice of our language. Our indoor voice, the one we save for job interviews and cocktail party discussions, must reflect an aspiration, that's what you owe that person you wish to impress.

There should be more gravitas to the induction of a word into our language. We are welcoming a member into an immortal legacy. Shakespeare, Hemingway, and Dylan have poured out their hearts through this language; that legacy deserves a verbal mechanism that is worthy the art they built with it, not a warted husk covered with push-pinned buzzwords and sticky notes.

It tends to be the quirks, the intangible and quite tangible flaws of a person that form the greatest weaknesses and simultaneously the greatest strengths. The greatest thing about the English Language is its fallible mortal nature. Its flexible walls and floors have allowed the great ones to push and create with a language of clay rather than one of bricks.

A language is a child of its society, a reflection of the care given to its keeping. We owe it more than a duct-taped quickie alteration every time there's a new billboard on the social super-highway. We owe it the respect to preserve its finer edges.

‘Unfriend' does not add anything to the mechanism of our language. When the wave of this website has ebbed back from the shore there will be no utility for this word, it will be unused, and with any luck, unremembered.


Your Un-unfriended pal,

Patrick