quixotic cantankerous conundrum Pecksniffian apathetic affect effect appreciate love w00t

pretentious hypocrite integrity obsequious pugnacious awkward whether guarantee melancholy eclectic

Sometimes we know why certain words are frequently looked up at a given moment, sometimes we don't. Pecksniffian, for example, was used by Bill O'Reilly a few times last year, and his use caused the word to spike in the daily list of words that are looked up online. Pugnacious was used by the late Gerald Ford to describe Dick Cheney. Sardoodledom was a word that caused a National Spelling Bee contestant to have an on-camera case of the giggles. On a more serious note, charlatan was used by the Virginia Tech shooter in a note found after the tragedy.

Thousands took part in the voting for Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2007, and the vast majority chose a small word that packs a pretty big punch.

The winner? W00t, defined in the Open Dictionary as an interjection that is "an expression of joy; similar in use to the word yay."

This year, instead of looking to our lists of frequently looked-up words, we asked visitors to our site to vote for one of twenty nominees — some were frequently looked up at our Online Dictionary and some were popular entries from our open source Open Dictionary.

W00t became popular in competitive online gaming forums as part of what is known as l337-speak (leet- or elite-speak) — an esoteric computer hacker jargon in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters. The double "o" in the word is usually represented by double zeroes and the exclamation is sometimes said to be an acronym for "we owned the other team" — again stemming from the gaming community. Another such word that is often encountered is n00b meaning newbie, or inexperienced gamer.

Because these words are new, specialized, and in current use by many people, they are excellent submissions for the Open Dictionary. The numerals used in the spelling of some of these words come from the efficiency of keying numerals in instant messaging or text messaging. Use of numerals is also one method computer hackers use to thwart automated text searches on online message boards. It is even possible that people simply enjoy the opacity of a jargon that keeps outsiders a bit in the dark.

What's interesting about w00t is that it represents a kind of reversal of the traditional pattern of language development. Rather than a word originating in speech and later adopting a written identity and formalized spelling, w00t seems to have started as a phenomenon that was initially keyboarded (or keypadded), and only after having been established in written form did it become a spoken word.

Innovation in communications technology often leaves its mark on language. Another word that came into English as a consequence of a new method of communication is the interjection hello, deemed necessary because one cannot see the person on the other end of a telephone.

While our editors are carefully watching usage of w00t, it is not a likely candidate for entry into Merriam-Webster's dictionaries anytime soon. But it is a real word in active continuous use for over a decade and tells us something new about how people communicate and express themselves.