Each year, popular dictionary Merriam-Webster names a word of the year with the help of the visitors to their website. They’re given a list of words that were submitted by users and then asked to vote on which word they feel should be the #1 word of the year. The big winner this year is the word “w00t” - an interjection used to “express joy.” While some of you may use this word and have heard others use it before, the main crowd of people that use it regularly are some of the hardcore online game enthusiasts.
For those of you unfamiliar, notice that it’s not “woot” (like the popular site www.woot.com) it’s w00t, a combination of letters (the w and t) and numbers (two zeros). Used in a sentence, it would look something like: w00t! I won the contest! It’s just one word of many that are considered l33t speak (like leet or elite) which is simply the combination of numbers and symbols put together to look like words which Merriam-Webster says is an “esoteric computer hacker language.”
Out of the choices voters had, I’d say w00t was probably the more interesting choice. Instead of honoring gamers today and thanking them for inventing the word of the year, we could be thanking Facebookers. Yep, also on the list at #2 was “Facebook” used as a verb like “did you facebook today?” Or, “I am going to facebook the party on Friday so everyone knows about it.”
Digital Inspiration pointed out how w00t had a Wikipedia page, but it was deleted because the origin of the term was disputed and it hadn’t reached “general usage.”
As you might expect, a new page for w00t was created today except now the content of the page revolves around the fact that this is now a word of the year. w00t!
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