Madam, – Is it just me who was disappointed to hear that the New Oxford American Dictionarychose "unfriend" as the word of the year (Home News, November 18th)? According to that dictionary, the definition of this new verb is "to remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site".
Hang on a second – the logical term for this action is surely “defriend”. The “de-“ prefix makes more sense as it can be seen as a synthesis of “delete” and “friend” and it joins a long list of action “de-” words, such as detach, derail, deflate. It also nicely mirrors its pre-existing verb opposite – “befriend”.
Can we write “unfriend” off as an Americanism and stick to “defriending”? Or is it too late? – Yours, etc,