Merriam-Webster bestows the honor of Word of the Year on a different word each year, and 2007 took a decided turn into the world of online gaming. While this yearis word isnit even in the dictionary, our own editor-in-chief, Bryan Chaffin, holds it near and dear to his heart: w00t.
Merriam-Webster defines "w00t" as a word that "first became popular in competitive online gaming forums as part of what is known as l33t (ileet,i or ielitei) speak -- an esoteric computer hacker language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters. Although the double ioi in the word is usually represented by double zeroes, the exclamation is also known to be an acronym for iwe owned the other teami -- again stemming from the gaming community."
The word of the year and the runners up also tend to say something about the current culture and public attitudes. In 2007, the runners up included facebook, conundrum, quixotic, blamestorm, sardoodledom, apathetic, Pecksniffian, hypocrite, and charlatan.
2006 had a different feel with its top word list that included truthiness, google, decider, war, insurgent, terrorism, vendetta, sectarian, quagmire, and corruption.
While 2007 may still have some of the darker overtones that dominated the 2006 list, it does end on a more positive note -- especially for everyone in the online gaming community.
w00t!