w00t is a winner
The votes have been tabulated and the winner is: w00t. Yes, w00t was chosen by thousands of voters at Merriam-Webster Online as the 2007 Word of the Year. w00t the heck does w00t mean? Good question. Let’s have the Merriam-Webster people explain it:
“This year's winning word first became popular in competitive online gaming forums as part of what 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.”
Got that? It probably would not have been my first choice, but w00t do I know? Sorry. I’ll stop. Here is a list of the other top vote getters for 2007.
1. w00t (interjection)
2. facebook
3. conundrum
4. quixotic
5. blamestorm
6. sardoodledom
7. apathetic
8. Pecksniffian
9. hypocrite
10. charlatan
The Merriam-Webster site also lists the winning words from the previous four years. The longer I looked at these lists, the clearer it became that the winning words were really mirrors reflecting the images and angst of the time. The topics represented by the lists range from America’s culture wars (marriage, truthiness) to politics (quagmire, filibuster) to the impact of natural disasters (tsunami, levee). Future historians would do well to study these lists for an accurate temperature of the times.
2006
1. truthiness (noun)
2. google
3. decider
4. war
5. insurgent
6. terrorism
7. vendetta
8. sectarian
9. quagmire
10. corruption
2005
1. integrity
2. refugee
3. contempt
4. filibuster
5. insipid
6. tsunami
7. pandemic
8. conclave
9. levee
10. inept
2004
1. blog
2. incumbent
3. electoral
4. insurgent
5. hurricane
6. cicada
7. peloton
8. partisan
9. sovereignty
10. defenestration
2003
1. democracy
2. quagmire
3. quarantine
4. matrix
5. marriage
6. slog
7. gubernatorial
8. plagiarism
9. outage
10. batten
2 Responses to “w00t is a winner”
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December 13th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Very interesting.
I’d like to predict the inappropriate plural ‘S’ as the new linguistic trend of 2008.
“I got works to do.”
“Hit me on the Facebooks.”
“I loves it.”
January 3rd, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I’d likes to think he’s wrong, but me thinks he’s on to something.