When I read that this year's Oxford University Press Word of the Year is "unfriend" I began typing a post about interpersonal relations on the Internet. Then I realized that the Word of the Year is a huge scam.

Because there's always room for more annual summation stunts, the lexicographers at Merriam-Webster have begun their yearly search for "word of the year" — a single term that aptly sums up all of 2006. Last year's reductionist masterpiece was "integrity." But this year, rather than just choosing from Internet and…