Googleganger is the word of the year

Every now and then a new word is so perfect that you wonder why it wasn't invented sooner. For years I've been surreptitiously searching the internet for my own name, sometimes to see whether anyone visits my totally boring home page (they don't), and sometimes to see who has the same name as mine.

And now I can come out of the closet with this activity, because once an activity has a name, of course it is legitimate. (Well, mostly.)

I've been looking for my googleganger.

The Macquarie Dictionary has named this as the word of the year. It's a noun meaning 'a person with the same name as oneself, whose online references are mixed with one's own among search results for one's name'. I guess only those of us with an online presence can have a googleganger.

I wonder whether there is already a new verb, to googlegang? I made a quick search and I can't see it yet.

Oxford dictionary's word of the year in the 20th century

I wondered whether the British part of the Oxford University Press has a different Word of the Year from the American English one, unfriend, but I haven't found the answer yet.

However, I did find a list of the words that were chosen as most prominent, from 1906 to 2006.

I estimate thirty-four of those words are part of my regular vocabulary.

American English word of the year is unfriend

The New Oxford American Dictionary has declared that the word of the year for 2009 is the verb unfriend.

That seems a sign of the times - unfriending people is a word that “has both currency and potential longevity", according to Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for the New Oxford American Dictionary. It's a pity the friendships don't also have longevity. I must admit to a cynical attitude about friendships maintained exclusively on Facebook without some personal interaction to bolster them. And perhaps we live in times when everything is disposable. Even people.

Lindberg says

Most “un-” prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar “un-” verbs (uncap, unpack), but “unfriend” is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!).

I recently posted about Chad Taylor's use of the modern verb friend and I subsequently discovered a Grammarphobia Blog entry dating a similar verb, to friend, back to the thirteenth century.