W00t: It's The New "Fresh"
Merriam-Webster's word of the year has been announced, Dear Gamers, and the word is "w00t". The celebratory term actually was voted to the top in an annual online poll as the word which best summed up 2007.
According to MW's president, John Morse, the word is a perfect choice for Word Of The Year because it combines the concepts of humor and 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.
...yeah, that's all well and good, but I'm pretty sure that Julia didn't shout with capital zeroes.
Gamers will 'w00t' over word of the year [Associated Press]
[Thanks Seth!]
Boy of Tomorrow
Posted to Miscellany on 13 December 2007
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: 2007, merriam webster, w00t, word of the year
Capital zeroes? What do lowercase zeroes look like?
Its not her fault that prostitutes had little to no computer access in the early 90's.
Richie said:
Capital zeroes? What do lowercase zeroes look like?
Maybe subscript or superscript? :-)