Merriam-Webster, Inc. on Tuesday declared “w00t,” an expression of joy coined by online gamers, as its word of the year for 2007. It was chosen by visitors to its website from 20 of the most frequently looked-up words on the site.
Runner-up was “facebook,” which means to look up people on facebook.com or to add friends to one’s list.
ph33r teh 1337!!!1!111
I must say I quite like “woot”. Not that I can ever remember using it, mind, but I like it. I hope that, when 1337 is dead and gone and nobody spells it “w00t”, that “woot” gains its place as a legitimate word, as used by little old ladies and such.
I love the word woot. I use it in everyday speech, as deadpan as possible. Makes the teenagers exercise their eyeball muscles.
“Hey, Mom, I finished my homework --”
“woot.”
:rolleyes: “…so I’m going over to Nick’s house.”
“rockors.”
:rolleyes:
Yes, that’s the ticket, WhyNot. Deadpan is definitely the way to go.
I do that too. Drives the library teenagers nuts. “Yeah, looks like you got pwned.” I pronounce it “p’ned.” Once, when we had some computer trouble in the form of a vile young man, somebody “haxored our boxors, sorry.” Heh.
I sometimes wonder about the comedic potential of names like Winds0r - and what the Royals think of it.
I may need to adopt w00t. My customary reply of ‘woohoo’ is a tad slow when employing the text function.
Woot.com has done much to make the word a permanent fixture in my vocabulary.
I’ve gone just a smidge farther than this and gone with the ironic use of “woot.”
Manager: So, the client came back with another 3 pages of changes that are due tomorrow.
Me: Woot.
Actually, this isn’t quite true, since I rarely use it at work (though I do use it this way in the presence of my fellow gaming coworkers), but you get the idea.
2002 called – they want their slang back.
So this word was born as a 1337 thing? I had no idea. I always figured it was Midwestern, since I never heard it until I went away to college in Cubbie Country.
The word of which year, 2002? :rolleyes:
Ludovic called, he wants his joke back.
I love and use w00t regularly, usually via email and messenger or other typed word, but I’ve used it for a good 8-9 years now. It seems odd to have documented pop culture lagging almost a decade behind you, linguistically speaking.
:smack: I swear to Og I didn’t even see that. How, I don’t know.
Place your bets as to which presidential candidate first uses w00t in a sentence so as to appear hip with the youngsters…
Stephen Colbert. He is America, after all.
Not “documented” so much as “mainstreamed.” From that point of view the lag isn’t all that surprising. Savvy?
Along similar lines, the word “fark” was used as a question in the game show Says You this week (for the bluffing round, naturally, for those of you who tune in).
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Does anyone else read “1337” as “Thirteen-Thirty-seven?”
I tend to gag slightly if I read it as “leet”
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