'w00t' Named 2007 Word of the Year

bukharin writes "'w00t', the "small word that packs a pretty big punch", has been named Word of the Year for 2007 by dictionary gurus Merriam-Webster. Visitors to the Merriam-Webster website were asked to vote for one of 20 commonly searched words and phrases. Facebook was the runner-up. Previously honored geek words include google (runner-up in 2006) and blog (winner in 2004)."

Comments

What?

[Gigiya]

I haven't seen anyone use "w00t" in about three years.

Re:What?

[Laebshade]

ya rly

Re:What?

[SatanicPuppy]

It's definitely on the decline in nerd culture. I guess the rest of the world is picking through our discards.

Re:What?

[Etrias]

It's hard to see it in any context but geek culture. I can't imagine that many people will even think it means anything other than some other misspelling.

Ladies and gentlemen, Merriam-Webster has officially jumped the shark.

Re:What?

[Elemenope]

A friend of mine's license plate is w00t. And he's a geek but by no means a cripplingly stunted one. Then again, the fact that the license plate was available says loads about just how important this word is to geek culture...not very.

re: Dictionaries jumping the shark...no kidding. Then again, dictionaries aren't supposed to be up to date so much as a conservative normalizing force in language usage. IIRC, the first dictionaries were intended to regularize spelling variations, more so than be comprehensive catalogues of words in usage.

Re:What?

[Palpitations]

So? When was the last time you saw anyone use 'sardoodledom' (one of the other nominees)? That's quite a conundrum. I'm not trying to start a blamestorm here, but it appears you may be an apathetic charlatan. Sardoodledom.

Sorry, someone had to do it (w00t!).

What???

[tritonman]

Who still uses w00t? I haven't used that since like 1998... What's the PHRASE of 2007, "All your base are belong to us?"

Re:What???

[Anonymous Coward]

According to my inbox, the most popular word for 2007 appears to be "V1@grA"

Re:What???

[webmaster404]

No the key phrase for years 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 is "This is the year of Linux on the desktop"

Re:What???

[filthpickle]

I would have voted for MegaDik. Some of those MegaDik spams are funnier than entire episodes of Everybody loves Raymond. My favorite is: " Now that you've got a gal that's hot You wanna hump her moistened twat. She looks so sizzling, she's so nice! But would your penile size suffice? Not sure she will long for more? You need a thing she would adore! But how to get it long and thick? Your only chance is MegaDik! You'll get so wanted super-size And see wild craving in her eyes! Your rod will bang her box so deep, Tonight you'll hardly fall asleep! " Although the fact that they are having "Holiday Specials" now is pretty damn funny too.

Re:What???

[ari_j]

Burma-Shave?

Re:What???

[mattwarden]

Also funnier than Everybody Loves Raymond:

1) dead tree stump
2) Charles Manson
3) Carrot Top

Ok, maybe that last one was a little too far...

That is quite exciting

[eln]

I am elated by this news. I feel a great sense of triumph that this word has received such an honor. If only there were some word that could express my happiness at this victory for geek-kind, perhaps a word with numbers substituted for letters somewhere.

Oh well, I guess I'll just go with "yay".

Veni, Vidi, Vici

[syntaxeater]

can now be summarized as "mount, grep, w00t"

Re:Veni, Vidi, Vici

[BrewedInTexas]

gawk, date, grep, touch, finger, unzip, strip, mount, fsck, fsck, fsck, yes, yes, yes, unmount, make clean, zip, sleep

I can just see the future...

[east coast]

Word of the year in 2012? Über.

2013: Slashvertisement
2014: fucktard
2015:1337

Re:I can just see the future...

[somersault]

2011: lolcat

WTF?

[Cleon]

Leet-speak from 2001 gets named "word of the year" in 2007? How does that work?

Next year I suppose it'll be "pwned."

£4m3.

Re:WTF?

[Anne_Nonymous]

So you're saying the "word of the year" competition is m00t?

Re:WTF?

[Jugalator]

They must just now be discovering Microsoft's leet speak tutorial archives.

Microsoft got boring though, now that page simply redirects here instead.

It's interesting to follow the revision histories on that page on archive.org. It started out pretty much as my first link, then they removed the "illegal activities" section probably out of political correctness and not wanting to damage their reputation, and now there's no info on leetspeak at all.

answer me these questions 3

[Gearoid_Murphy]

w00t is your name? w00t is your favourite color? w00t is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow!!!!!

You'd think that...

[PinkyDead]

Merriam-Webster's word of the year would be in their dictionary.

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/w00t. Odd that.

Merriam-Webster needs to leave the house more...

[Loosifur]

Pecksniffian? Pecksniffian was in the running??

Seriously???

Re:What about this word of the year?

[Von Helmet]

I make that to be 4 words, assuming a word length of 32 bits.

Etymology

[Bj�rn]

The Etymology according to the wiktionary

Of uncertain origin; theories include:

• an acronym from "we own the other team";
• an onomatopoeia representing the sound of capture sirens from online capture the flag games;
• a blend of wow and loot;
• a leetspeak mutation of whoo, what or root;
• a corruption of root, shouted by hackers when they obtain root-level access in a targeted system.