

"Birther " was in the running, so was "death panels," but in the end the New Oxford American Dictionary can only pick one word of the year. For 2009, it's "unfriend," says the Oxford University Press.

Or in New Oxfordspeak: "unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook. As in, 'I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.'"

"It has both currency and potential longevity," notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford's U.S. dictionary program. "In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year."

Getting down into the lexicographic weeds, Lindeberg says "unfriend" is different from the norm in the use of "un."



"It assumes a verb sense of 'friend' that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!)," says Lindberg. "'Unfriend' has real lex-appeal."

Many of the words under consideration had tech roots, such as "sexting," the sending of sexually explicit text and pictures by cellphone.

Click here to read Crunchgears rather jaundiced view of the word-of-the year phenomenon, noting that the 2008 pick -- "hypermiling" -- "seems positively archaic now."

Update at 6 p.m. ET: The senior lexicographer at Oxford University Press, Christine Lindberg, tells NPR's All Things Considered that the OED lists a citation for "unfriend" from 1659, when the word meant essentially the same as it does today.

"I think it's a remarkable resurrection," she said. "In a way, I look at 'unfriend' as the 'Sleeping Beauty' of 2009 words."

Here are the finalists, by category: