Word of the year

Massachussets-based Merriam webster Inc has declared the word 'w00t' - a word used by online gamers as the word of the year. The word typically types with two 0s represents a new direction in American language led by a generation raised primarily on SMS and online games.

The word is like saying 'yay' and could be after a triumph or for no reason at all. Visitors to Merriam Webster's site were asked to vote on 20 words and phrases culled from the most frequently looked up words on the site. The next most popular word was Facebook, a verb meaning to add people on the website Facebook or to search for people on a social networking site. W00t represents a growing use of numeric keyboards to type words. Some of the common number substitutions are 3 for E, 0 for O, 7 for T and 4 for A. W00t seems to have been derived from the Greek word Whoot which is obsolete by itself but is another way of saying hoot. W00t is the sound made by people playing the game Quake III when they jump like bunnies.

Merriam Webster called these new words as part of esoteric computer hacker language commonly known as 'l33t speak', which actually means (Leet) Elite speak.
A separate survey of common words used in the media and internet conducted by Global Language monitor ranked the word Hybrid as number one followed by the word surge. Bluetooth ranked third among the list of top words. The top searched phrase was climate change.

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