Technology rules the world! At least this is how it seems after seeing the word chosen by Merriam-Webster as word of the year for 2007, namely “w00t”. Computers and numbers seem to have won over the world of letters, since one of the words specific for “computer language” has been chosen as word of the year.  

A definition is given by the company to those not computer geeks enough to know exactly what “w00t” is supposed to mean. According to Merriam-Webster, “w00t” is defined as "expressing joy; similar in use to the word yay."

The word was not chosen by the company itself, but by the site's visitors, who were asked to choose a word from a list of the 20 most frequently searched words. This choice shouldn't come as a surprise after all, as we live in a world ruled by technology and by a generation raised on computers and video games.

Asked about the people's choice, the company stated: "This year's winning word first became popular in competitive online gaming forums as part of what is known as l33t ('leet,' or 'elite') speak-an esoteric computer hacker language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters. Although the double 'o' in the word is usually represented by double zeroes, the exclamation is also known to be an acronym for 'we owned the other team'—again stemming from the gaming community."     

However, the word chosen is not even included in the printed version of the dictionary, but that doesn't mean it won't soon be. We can expect pretty much everything at this stage. Dictionaries will probably become more and more populated with these l33t words, giving way to the world of video games and chatting, combining thus these new age, trendy words, with their more classical companions.

Asked about this choice, Merriam-Webster President John Morse said the word was chosen because it "blends whimsy and new technology." He added: "People look for self-evident numeral-letter substitutions: 0 for O; 3 for E; 7 for T; and 4 for A. This is simply a different and more efficient way of representing the alphabetical character."
    
We have to ask ourselves: is it really more efficient or is it just an attempt to be different from the others?