'w00t' is Merriam-Webster's word of the year

by Alexander Sliwinski on Dec 12th 2007 6:00AM

Merriam-Webster (you know, that dictionary company) announced its word of the year is "w00t." And that sound you now hear is millions of English teachers screaming out in terror. The leading US dictionary stated that the word is like saying "yay" and was selected after Merriam-Webster website users were invited to vote on 20 words frequently looked-up or submitted by readers. The runner-up word was "facebook" as a verb, which means to add or search for a person on a social networking site.

The etymology of "w00t" is still a little messy. Some say it's a combination of wow and loot, others say it comes from hoot, but the zero replacing the letter o definitely comes from l33t speak. English sticklers can rest easy for now, but the day will come when companies pwn each other in the Wall Street Journal and someone makes a newb of themselves on the front page of the New York Times. w00t!

Source

Tags: dictionary, merriam-webster, w00t, woot

Reader Comments (63)

"FORWARDSLASH-OH-BACKSLASH. COLON-DEE, COLON-DEE, COLON-DEE."

\o/ :D :D :D

Oh god. Why. WHYYYYYYYYY?

:(

I can has engwish wanguage back now pwease?

maybe teh n00bs are multiplying? i can't believe people started spreading that it was "we owned the other team" woot was around way before that bs story was cooked up kids

and i knew i wasn't alone in knowing this.

http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/grantbarrett/comments/the_real_history_and_origin_of_woot_and_w00t/

"More implausible as the origin is the backronym We Own(ed) the Other Team, also said to come from use in unnamed multiplayer video games. A backronym is a word interpreted as an acronym after that word has already been around a while. We know the word existed before the phrase because the phrase doesn’t show up in online discussions groups until March 2003. The longer phrase easily could have existed in multiplayer game chatter before then, but in general, once a term is popular in game chatter, it quickly also shows up in web and Usenet discussions related to the game, which is not the case here."

it's the same kind of shit that makes people think the phrase "piqued my interest"

was "peaked my interest" because said "interest" was elevated to a higher level.
THAT isn't the fuckin phrase gentlemen

"I could care less." That's my personal favorite phrase-fuckup.

I've always been a fan of "taken for granite" myself.

Woot would be okay, but why w00t? The zeroes just make it extremely geeky. Doesn't it stand for "we owned the other team"? That's what I always used it for. The zeroes are just, well, moot.

w00p was definitely pre 1998 gaming. Amongst Q2 engines from my perspectives at least.

"we owned the other team" isn't the origin, but it can been seen as an accurate definition.