gridlore: Photo: penguin chick with its wings outstretched, captioned "Yay!" (Penguin - Yay!)
[personal profile] gridlore
Merriam-Webster's Word of '07: 'W00t'

Expect cheers among hardcore online game enthusiasts when they learn Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year. Or, more accurately, expect them to "w00t."

"W00t," a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness or triumph, topped all other terms in the Springfield-based dictionary publisher's online poll for the word that best sums up 2007.

Merriam-Webster's president, John Morse, said "w00t" was an ideal choice because it blends whimsy and new technology.

"It shows a really interesting thing that's going on in language. It's a term that's arrived only because we're now communicating electronically with each other," Morse said.

Gamers commonly substitute numbers and symbols for the letters they resemble, Morse says, creating what they call "l33t speak" — that's "leet" when spoken, short for "elite" to the rest of the world.


w00t!

Profile

gridlore: Doug looking off camera with a grin (Default)
Douglas Berry

October 2023

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
2223 2425262728
293031    

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Aug. 18th, 2025 05:49 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios