Unfriend Origin goes beyond what the recent generations know
Unfriend Origin – The word “unfriend” predated the creation of Facebook, one of the most popular social media platforms nowadays.
The social media site owned by Mark Zuckerberg was officially formed in 2004. You can add people as friends on this platform but there is also an option to “unfriend” them, according to your will and preference. The word “unfriend” has become popular in recent generations because of that.
However, based on the article in Word Histories, the first recorded use of the word unfriend was in 1659. Church of England clergyman Thomas Fuller (1608-61) wrote in The Appeal of Injured Innocence (1659) to Peter Heylin (1599-1662), a churchman who had criticized The Church History of Britain from the birth of Jesus Christ until the year 1648, published in 1655.
Fuller wrote: “I hope, Sir, that we are not mutually un-friended by this difference which hath happened betwixt us. And now, as duellers, when they are both out of breath, may stand still and parley, before they have a second pass, let us in cold blood exchange a word, and, mean time, let us depose, at least, suspend, our animosities.”
It was the only instance the word was used until it became popular in the 2000s. Using “unfriend” on social media means deleting someone from your friends list. Another term was used for this and it was “defriend.”
Before the verb “unfriend” was used, the adjective “unfriended” was already used by English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. The famous personality in literature used the adjective from the mid-16th to the 19th centuries.
In his Twelfe Night, Or what you will (around 1601), this was written:
(Folio 1, 1623)
I could not stay behinde you: my desire
(More sharpe then filed steele) did spurre me forth,
And not all loue to see you (though so much
As might haue drawne one to a longer voyage)
But iealousie, what might befall your trauell,
Being skillesse in these parts: which to a stranger,
Vnguided, and unfriended, often proue
Rough, and vnhospitable. My willing loue,
The rather by these arguments of feare
Set forth in your pursuit.
The noun unfriend was first recorded in Brut (late 12th-early 13th century), a poetical paraphrase by the poet Laȝamon of The Roman de Brut (mid-12th century), by the Norman poet Wace. The term means an enemy or one who is not a friend or on friendly terms.
Meanwhile, when you use the internet, there is a list of Internet Etiquette that you should remember.