It’s like saying “yay,” says Merriam-Webster, the Massachusetts-based dictionary company, about their word of the year:
“w00t.”
“It could be after a triumph or for no reason at all,” Merriam-Webster said, according to Reuters. Thanks, online gamer nerds and 15-year-old text messaging addicts!
Visitors to Merriam-Webster’s Web site were invited to vote for one of 20 words and phrases culled from the most frequently looked-up words on the site and submitted by readers.
Runner-up was “facebook” as a new verb meaning to add someone to a list of friends on the Web site Facebook.com or to search for people on the social networking site.
Merriam-Webster President John Morse said “w00t” reflected the growing use of numeric keyboards to type words.
“People look for self-evident numeral-letter substitutions: 0 for O; 3 for E; 7 for T; and 4 for A,” he said. “This is simply a different and more efficient way of representing the alphabetical character.”
