Online Gamers: Something To "W00t" About

(AP)  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, topped all other terms in the Springfield 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.

For technophobes, the word also is familiar from the 1990 movie "Pretty Woman," in which Julia Roberts startles her date's upper-crust friends with a hearty "Woot, woot, woot!" at a polo match.

The 2006 pick, "truthiness," also has its roots in pop culture. It was popularized by Comedy Central satirical political commentator Stephen Colbert.

Some also-rans in the 2007 list: the use of "facebook" as a verb to signify using the Web site by that name; nuanced terms such as "quixotic" and "hypocrite"; and "blamestorm," a meeting in which mistakes are aired, fingers are pointed and much discomfort is had by all.

[kq2076]

Expect that in "Pretty Woman" she was saying either
"Woof" "Woo" depending on who you ask and it was a
reference to the Arsenio Hall show.

[nordeck52]

petalsnroots, what are you talking about!? Your post makes absolutely no sense!

[wny14127]

To petalsnroots,
what are you talking about? Your post has no reference to the topic.

[lochlan-2009]

Don''t care.

[iceman_1960]

Do any other dictionary words contain numerals like that ?

Is "WW2" considered a word.

"nth" was the first non-abbreviated word to contain no vowels. (The y in "rhythm" is sometimes a vowel.)

[allunknowing]

shanev137, the irony of you saying that on a weblog is just uncanny.

[shanev137]

Dumb.

Geeks in need of a real life.

[fibonacci_]

They should put "pwned" in there.

[brianbwb-2009]

"W00t," is a word coined some ten years ago in the underground hacker e-zines, as a substitute for the word "root", the main directory in unix based computer systems which, when access is gained by the hackers, allows them to remotely control the computer, or network.