And The Word Of The Year Goes To...W00t ! 
Friday, December 14th, 2007

Oh, see, now I feel like a member of the "in" crowd, because I used this word a lot this year.  Well, the last few months, anyway.    Merriam-Webster has announced their Word of the Year for 2007, and the winner is:  w00t!  And that's with two zeroes, not two o's.

W00t, which Merriam-Webster defines as "(interjection): expressing joy (it could be after a triump, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word 'yay,'" has not made it into the regular Merriam-Webster dictionary yet, though.

It's based on votes from cyber-visitors, and it's not quite as likely that the average person would know the term.  Though it's used by forums, bloggers, and chatrooms worldwide, it hasn't quite made it into the mainstream.

"This year's winning word," Merriam-Webster said on their site, "First became popular in competitive online gaming forums as part of waht is known as l33t ('leet,' or 'elite') speak - an esoteric computer hacker language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters.

"Although the double "o" in the word is usually represented by double zeroes, the exclamation is also known to be an acronym for 'we owned the other team.' - again stemming from the gaming community."

Eesh.  I don't feel so cool anymore, suddenly.  I think I'm going to go back to using "woo-hoo." 

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