A term users of social networking sites will be familiar with has been named the word of the year.

'Unfriend', the process of removing someone as a friend from social networking websites like Facebook, came out on top in the New Oxford American Dictionary's 'Word of the Year' battle.

The Dictionary defines the verb 'unfriend' as follows: "To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook."

"In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year," Christine Lindberg, a researcher from Oxford's US dictionary, told ananova.com.

'Defriend' is a another term used to describe the same process but Oxford went with 'unfriend' as they found it was more common across the various sites.

Other tech-related words which made the short list were: 'sexting', the sending of texts of a sexual nature; and 'intexticated', becoming distracted by SMSing while driving.