Every year the New Oxford American Dictionary prepares for the holidays by announcing the Word of the Year. After all the entries and voting in, the winning word is: unfriend

A verb, to unfriend is “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook,” the English language as a subject newsgroups are quick to point out. A favorite among the social networking crowd, unfriend is hardly new – its definitions in the online user-generated Urban Dictionary date back to 2004.

Christine Lindberg, a language researcher for Oxford’s U.S. dictionary, said: “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.”

There has been some debate across newsgroups about whether ‘defriend’ is the more commonly used term, especially when referencing Facebook. However, Oxford spokesman Christian Purdy said researchers found that ‘unfriend’ was more commonly used.

Unfriend beat out 18 other OUP finalists, including death panel, a theoretical body invoked in opposition to American health-care reform; funemployed, or enjoying one’s unemployment; hashtag, from both USENET and now Twitter fame; and teabagger, a person who has opposed the American stimulus package through community protests akin to the Boston Tea Party.

Oxford’s past words of the year include hypermiling, the attempt to maximize gas mileage by making adjustments to a vehicle or driving habits, in 2008; locavore, a consumer of locally grown foods, in 2007; carbon neutral, the reduction and offset of harmful carbon emissions, in 2006; and podcast, a downloadable audio file, in 2005.