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Merriam-Webster has named it’s Word of the Year for 2007, and the winner is “w00t!”. If you’re not a gamer or interweb geek you may be thinking “What the hell is w00t!?” It’s a general-purpose interjection expressing joy or excitement, usually used when smiting one’s enemies or scoring cool stuff. Note that the two middle letters are zeroes, because the word stems from L33t, the hacker spelling system.
There are a bunch of theories about the origin of “w00t!”, but they all center around online gaming. The two most plausible are:
- It’s an acronym for “we owned other team”, originating in online games like Counter Strike
- It’s RPG shorthand for “wow, loot!”
I think “w00t!” is a great word, but I’m a little dissapointed. I would have voted for “pwned”…
via BoingBoing
