“W00t” Named Word of the Year
Say what you will about the Lolcats phenomenon–whether you hate LOLspeak for further degrading our already-ailing national diction or whether you love teh LOLz for infusing our lexicon with so much awsumz, you have to admit: the meme is tenacious. Also, it has always been full of gaming lingo and themes! Turns out the misspelled cat macros and attendant hax0r humor were perhaps a harbinger for a major cultural moment, because Miriam-Webster has gone and crowned the online utterance “w00t” its Word of 2007, calling it “a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness.” Miriam-Webster president John Morse lauded the choice for its blend of “technology and whimsy,” while the Associated Press actually posited that “hardcore online gamers” would “w00t” out loud when they learned the news. More predictably, those “hardcore gamers” have responded with utter derision. Painfully clunky attempts by traditional media to belatedly explain gaming lingo notwithstanding, it’s always interesting to see gaming culture creeping further into the mainstream.
Image courtesy of Worth1000.com.