The Story: The Oxford American Dictionary has chosen “unfriending” as its word of the year.  OneRiot gives our pick for other 2009 candidates.

The Search: Oxford Dictionary

Having 825 Facebook friends can often be a burden.  The constant string of unwarranted and obnoxious status updates can drive a social networker absolutely batty. Treading lightly and keeping a finger on the “remove connection” button has become such a necessity in our digital society that the act of eliminating said connection a.k.a. “unfriending” has now emerged as a predominant daily quandary for the net set. Though this writer prefers to refer to it as de-friending, the Oxford American dictionary has chosen to recognize the former term as its “word of the year.”  In celebration of the emergence of such popular new verbiage, we here at OneRiot thought it a good idea to proclaim our favorite words that have recently worked their way into the lexicon.

1. DVR- We know it’s only three letters, but along with Tivo these letters have managed to save our television viewing lives from an onslaught of car commercials, because who buys a car based on a commercial anyway?

2. Sexting- There’s no word that sounds like what it means more…and it means good times or getting expelled from high school.

3. Truthiness- Stephen Colbert’s linguistic triumph was truly the perfect way to describe the regarding of a gut feeling as fact regardless of any evidence stating the contrary, a practice held in high esteem by many a news network.

4. Meep- This onomatopoeic word isn’t necessarily new.  It was Beaker from The Muppet Show’s sole form of communication way back when.  However, it’s recent controversial revival as a jack-of-all-phrases at a High School in Massachusetts had parents and teachers rumbling. Needless to say, the coolness factor is immediately upped when parents just don’t understand.

5. Totes- Bringing the valley girl style to a lazier generation. Totes is “totally” for people who can’t be bothered with three syllables.  And it’s totes fun to say.

6. Tweetup- Meetups between Twitter followers where they prove their social ineptitude by spending the majority of the time ignoring who they are hanging out with while tweeting to their followers not present about whom they are hanging out with.

7. Celebreality- The alternate universe lived in by b to d list celebrities, in which they are followed around by VH1 cameras for the sole purpose of proving that their mundane existences and unrealistic methods of searching for love may be more interesting than that of the public at large.

Many more new words have triumphed linguistically over the past few years, but trying to name them all would require thumbing through a very large book called the Oxford American Dictionary and frankly we just don’t have the time to engage in such balderdash.