SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - Expect cheers among hardcore online game
enthusiasts when they learn Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year. Or,
more accurately, expect them to "w00t."
"W00t," a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an
exclamation of happiness or triumph, topped all other terms in the
Springfield-based dictionary publisher's online poll for the word
that best sums up 2007.
Merriam-Webster's president, John Morse, said "w00t" was an ideal
choice because it blends whimsy and new technology.
"It shows a really interesting thing that's going on in language.
It's a term that's arrived only because we're now communicating
electronically with each other," Morse said.
Gamers commonly substitute numbers and symbols for the letters they
resemble, Morse says, creating what they call "l33t speak" that's
"leet" when spoken, short for "elite" to the rest of the
world.
For technophobes, the word also is familiar from the 1990 movie
"Pretty Woman," in which Julia Roberts startles her date's
upper-crust friends with a hearty "Woot, woot, woot!" at a polo
match.
Purists of "l33t speak" often substitute a "7" for the final "t,"
expressing a "w007" of victory an "in your face" of sorts when
they defeat an online gaming opponent.
"W00t" was among 20 nominees in a list of the most-searched words
in Merriam-Webster's online dictionary and most frequently
submitted terms from users of its "open dictionary."
The choice did not make Allan Metcalf, executive secretary of the
American Dialect Society, say "w00t."
"It's amusing, but it's limited to a small community and unlikely
to spread and unlikely to last," said Metcalf, an English professor
at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill.
The 2006 pick, "truthiness," also has its roots in pop culture. It
was popularized by Comedy Central satirical political commentator
Stephen Colbert.
Some also-rans in the 2007 list: the use of "facebook" as a verb to
signify using the Web site by that name; nuanced terms such as
"quixotic," "hypocrite" and "conundrum"; and "blamestorm," a
meeting in which mistakes are aired, fingers are pointed and much
discomfort is had by all.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071211/ap_on_re_us/word_of_the_year
