BlogHer - W00t Wakes up the Wordsmiths and Comics - Comments

Language doesn't hold still, does it,

Virginia DeBolt — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:12:46 -0600

Lisa? Thanks for the quote.

Regarding our swiftly changing oral language habits, I have to say I love that commercial where the woman asks her gray-haired mother what she's doing she replies that she's texting her BFF Rose.

http://www.webteacher.ws/
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A rose by any other nam3

Virginia DeBolt — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:08:27 -0600

K1m, 1'm h0n0r3d to b3 y0ur guru.

http://www.webteacher.ws/
http://first50.wordpress.com/

It's Leet to you

Virginia DeBolt — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:04:28 -0600

Kalyn, it's part of that alphanumeric geek speak Leet I referred to. A lot of people use Leet to make up passwords where you need combinations of numbers and letters. And when using Twitter or text, numbers often get substituted for words. I think it's part of the quick and instant communication phase we're in right now. Although in the one post I quoted where it was claimed as an acronym, the letter O would make more sense than a zero.

http://www.webteacher.ws/
http://first50.wordpress.com/

Spelling woot any way we please

Lisa Stone — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 13:56:47 -0600

Virginia, I love this post!

I have on my bookshelf a 1996 version of the Wired Style Guide: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age, Edited by Constance Hale. The book is demonstrative of Wired's look and feel at its retina-searing zenith. It's all acid-green and black pages. Unlike the Strunk and White's or Chicago Manual of Style or AP Style Guide, all of which I used at the time as a reporter, this little book includes words like "phreak" and "angels" (entrepreneurs and professional resk-takers who invest in Silicon Valley start-ups) and even "RTFM" (read the f**king manual)

My favorite part is the permission Hale takes in her introduction to play with the language in a way that morphs along with the technology now at our fingertips. She writes,

"We're not telling the techies of he world ot eschew jargon and adopt New Yorker grammar; we're trying to convey the excitement of the innovations we cover - in the language of those who create them. We don't dumb things down. We don't shrink from experimentation. We're happy to push the boundaries of language and form...

"Wired Style is anarchic, fluid, and rule-averse, so beware: the digital dictions in this book may someday ache for updates and clarifications."

Amen!

So while I quite agree with the bloggers you quote that W00t's a tad out of date, it did take the dons of the French language about 200 years to add the word "sandwich" to that lexicon. I'm just glad to see English language dictionaries trying to catch up.

Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette

I guess the alpha-numeric makes it gamer-y

Kim Pearson — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 13:34:31 -0600

Kalyn, I'm with you. I didn't know about the "0" thing either. But then I didn't know that mixing letters and numbers thing had a name, either ( or should I say nam3?) Once again, Virginia, you are my guru.

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Ok, so I don't know much

Kalyn Denny — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 11:15:52 -0600

Hmm, noticing that I had no idea that they were supposed to be zeroes in the middle of the word, and wondering why it matters?

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

W00t Wakes up the Wordsmiths and Comics

Virginia DeBolt — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 08:40:05 -0600

Merriam-Webster got the attention of wordsmiths, librarians, comedians, and gamers this week when it officially named the alphanumeric interjection "w00t" the word of the year. Those are two zeros you see in the word. It's the first alphanumeric word in the dictionary.

At LAist, where I found this great tee shirt image with its celebratory w00t!, blogger Callie Miller commented on her mixed reactions to the news:

So Merriam-Webster's word of the year is w00t. Sort of uninspiring, right? As in, aren't there thousands of other words that communicate so much more, mean so much more than the gamer battle-cry for "yes! i just killed your guy and i still have seven lives left!"?!?!?

Surely there are more important things that happened in the word world than this, we kept thinking. Surely there were actual words that should have won. "Facebook" was the runner-up at Webster's, while another study tracking this year's word usage pointed to "surge" (as in troop-surge), "hybrid", "climate change" and "Bluetooth" as top contenders.

This whole w00t thing seemed silly to us. But then we remembered the comments here on LAist, where w00t appears almost daily. And the many LAist emails and IM's in which it appears frequently. It takes many forms - from the standard w00t to "wooty woot!" We've even seen "w to the 00t." Really. Our favorite usage of it is verbal, and nearly always ironic.

What does all of this usage and partial usage and ironic usage of w00t mean? That we will one day communicate in binary code?

The word became popular among gamers, who often speak in the esoteric geek speak known as Leet. Or should I say 133t? Or 1337? With leet speak, numbers are substituted for letters. It's quite possible that when gamers heard that w00t was in the running for word of the year, they began flooding in the votes.

Christina Crouch, commenting on the word at SlashGear, used the persona of a library to express her opinion.

I’m very familiar and friendly with words. I’ve been a library for 8 years and I’ve seen how we abuse the language. It’s a shame to think that 50-60 years ago people had a vocabulary of a much higher quality than us but so is the times. As a bonus for us, we have more words than they could have ever dreamed about, words like: Shizzle, Truthiness, and w00t.

Christine Bordon at The Daily Clog thinks Merriam-Webster is sadly behind the times.

Besides, wasn’t “w00t” so high school? You’d think that being bloggers we’d be up on the nexus of technology and language … but we think we’ve gone beyond the phase of 1337 speak.

Merriam Webster’s president, John Morse explains the trend behind the word of ’07:

"It’s a term that’s arrived only because we’re now communicating electronically with each other."

Yes, that makes sense. Pagers, cell phones, computers, text messaging, instant messaging, e-mail and blogs didn’t really peak until 2007. Man, to think that only a year ago we were still using carrier pigeons. What a n00b. Or is it “nub” now?

Yvonne Russell at Grow Your Writing Business was more interested in some of the other contenders.

Check out the 2007 Top 10 Words Shortlist. Where was I when “Pecksniffian” or “sardoodledom” were invented? Scrabble players must love these lists. Have you coined a word yourself?

The 2006 word of the year was truthiness. Truthiness? Well, that’s one I missed and I call myself a word collector.

Kathy Schenck at JS Online gave us even more info about this year's words.

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.

The 2006 pick, truthiness, also has its roots in pop culture. It was popularized by Comedy Central satirical political commentator Stephen Colbert.

Some also-rans in the 2007 list: the use of facebook as a verb to signify using the Web site by that name; nuanced terms such as quixotic and hypocrite; and blamestorm, a meeting in which mistakes are aired, fingers are pointed and much discomfort is had by all.

At Librarian in Black, Sarah went way back in time to the word of the year for 2004.

Merriam-Webster's 2007 Word of the Year is w00t! No, seriously. It is w00t. I mean it. And as I had a w00t temporary tattoo during Internet Librarian, I feel hip now. Well, sort of. In case you're curious, last year's word of the year was "truthiness," (yes, I'm serious), in 2005 it was "integrity," and in 2004 it was "blog."

Blog was the word of the year in 2004, huh? Well, BlogHer started in 2005, and that word has never been the same since.

I'll conclude with Jenna Wortham at Underwire who provides a little etymology when she explains that the word may be an acronym.

Often thought to be an acronym for "we owned the other team," it's generally used as a cheer. You know, like when you kick-ass in a level 60 instances in the Outlands.

And that's a wrap. Yay! I mean, w00t!