I think that one of the more surreal experiences is watching the multiple TVs in the gym first thing in the morning. I’m not listening to the sound… I’m listening to some jaunty tunes on my iPod (that’s right… I said ‘jaunty’)… and ESPN, CNN and the local NBC affiliate are all plugging away in their noiseless testament to why we really truly do NOT need 24-hour news networks.

At any rate, my fun fact for the day (gleaned from the bottom of CNN’s screen) - Merriam Webster has released its 2007 Word of the Year.

w00t.

No, that’s not me expressing my delight at the announcement, that’s the actual word of the year: w00t. Apparently it’s born out of the world of gaming and, though it is now spelled “correctly” with zeros instead of Os, it originally stood for “we owned the other team.” Who knew? The word hasn’t officially made it into the printed dictionary yet, but that can’t be far off.

Really, this feels like the third cousin of the emoticon smackdown a few days ago.

Though I’m a little dismayed to see “words” that aren’t even spelled with letters being elevated like this, I’m willing to admit the necessity and value of colloquialisms… and the fact that our language is constantly evolving demonstrates how important it is that we not only learn what is emotionally and socially relevant to people… but we have to continue to learn their language every single day.

Even if it is spelled with two zeros.

PS - Another great aspect of the “word of the year” list is that the words are not all new words. In fact, most of them are just words that have permeated our consciousness throughout the year… and what a great roadmap to look back over the last few years to see what words were most present in our lives, eh?

Update: I’ve read another article about this exciting announcement in which they suggest that “woot, woot” appeared as early as 1990’s Pretty Woman. I’m going to have to refute that on the grounds that I’m pretty sure she was more in the Arsenio Hall “woof, woof” milieu. Sorry to nit-pick… but I can’t help myself.

One more Update and I’m done: Here are some notes on the origins of “w00t” from one of my FAVORITE sites.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 7:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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