LEXTING,TEXTING AND SEXTING

Nov 23, 2009 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

---

It was in Barbados that I first encountered the use of “unfair” as a verb.  Our office was next to the Wanderers ground and I often wandered across to watch cricket.  One day, this player who believed that he was given what in Trinidad would be called a “bad” out, was extremely upset when he came off the field and said, “The umpire unfaired me.”
He did not say cheated or even “thiefed” but “unfaired”.  Interestingly, I never heard the word “fair” used as a verb.  Had the cricketer survived the vociferous appeal, would he have said smugly or gloated victoriously, “The umpire faired me.”
All might not be fair in love and cricket, especially if Shane Warne is pressuring the Umpires with his constant appealing, but can one say, “It is better to be unfaired than never to have been faired at all?”
I thought of this when I saw a news report that the New Oxford American Dictionary declared that the word “unfriend” is the 2009 word of the year.  “Unfriend” means deleting a “friend” on a social networking site such as Facebook.  For those who don’t know what Facebook is about or social networking, Facebook is a free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.
The company says, “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.”  According to the site “Campus Firewatch”, Facebook was founded in February 2004 and is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and co-workers.
Facebook has more than 130 million active users, the average user has 100 friends on the site, 2.6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide) and more than 13 million users update their statuses at least once each day.  Since the network is about connecting with people in your life, the act of disconnection is therefore, a big thing that can lead to psychoses, neuroses and other roses that prove that life is not a bed of roses.
Commenting on the choice of “unfriend”, Oxford senior lexicographer Christine Lindberg is quoted as saying that the word has “both currency and potential longevity”.  She added, “In the online social networking context, it’s meaning is understood, so it’s adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year.”  Not knowing that the Bajans were there first, she explained that most prefixed words beginning with ‘un’ were adjectives, such as ‘unacceptable’ or ‘unpleasant’ and that 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!).  Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”
While “unfriend” has “lex” appeal, little do the Oxford lexicographers know that Trinidadians discovered that “friend” has sex appeal and used “friend” as a verb long before Facebook.  It might actually make them twitter if they know.
The fact is that long before “unfriend”, Trinis had a special meaning for “friend”.  You would hear a man say, “Well I friending with Pamela long time now” or other people use the term, “She friending with he?  That drunkard!”  The word “friending” here has a distinctly sexual connotation. It goes beyond mere sleeping with someone and implies a relationship of sorts, generally one that is extra-marital.
True, nobody took the next linguistic step to say, “She unfriended with him because he beat her” or “If you don’t leave your wife, I am unfriending you.”  However, where there is friending, it stands to reason, particularly since it infringes on the marital zone, that a lot of unfriending has also happened although it might be by another name, like “horn” which is what Trinis call the act of being cuckolded.
This has led to terms like “horner man”, “horner woman” which, interestingly, might be related to but not derived from “horny”.
The choice of “unfriend” has broken what seemed to be a trend.  Previous choices for the Word of the Year were environmentally related – hypermiling (strategies to increase gas mileage such as removing roof racks or overinflating tyres), locavore (eating only locally produced food) and carbon neutral (removing as much carbon from the environment as you put in so the next generation wouldn’t be unfaired).
With “unfriend” came some other words from the cellular dimension.  I like “Intexticated” which means “the state of distraction caused by texting on a cellphone while driving a vehicle.”
I suppose you can be given an e-ticket for that or the police can take away your phone and de-mobilise you.  Worse, unable to communicate with your friends and family, you might be left unfriended.  “Sexting” also came in for mention.  While sending sexually explicit texts and pictures happens in Mexico, it is not only a Mex-ting but has gone global.
As some parents have discovered, it can be very vex-ting.  Two other words chosen by Oxford are “Freemium” and “Funemployed.”  “Fremium” is a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content.
This is something we’ve all experienced with software and “funemployed” which is taking advantage of being unemployed to have some fun.  In Trinidad, this is when you start friending with somebody.
President Obama has caused the introduction of two new words.  One is “teabagger”, a term applied to those people who opposed his taxation policies and had local demonstrations called “tea parties” and “birther”, conspiracy theorists who challenge the President’s birth certificate.
Given the way Obama’s popularity ratings have dropped, it is clear that a lot of them have already unfriended him.  The question is, would he get a next term or would he be funemployed?
*Tony Deyal was last seen on Caribbean Airlines with some “exotic dancers” deported from Antigua.  While they did not have stamped visas, they had “tramp stamps” or highly visible tattoos on the lower back.

---

---