Bet you would never have guessed this but Merriam-Webster’s 2007 Word of the Year is

w00t (interjection)

Similar to “yaye” or “woohoo”. It’s an expression of joy for no reason at all, after a triumph or when you’re in agreement with something.

Could also mean Waste of Our Time or Way Out of Topic (in online forums).

It’s normally written with a double zero instead of the capitalized O. The word originated from the online gaming community when a team/ individual conquered or beat out other teams. To online gamers, it is part of the “esoteric computer hacker language” known as “l33t speak.” It replaces the now obsolete word “whoot”. Plasticbag traces the origins of w00t.

Example of its usage:

“w00t! We beat the Red Sox 12-0.”
“Just got an A on my finals. w00t!”

Click here to see the rest of 2007’s top 10 words.

Previous Words of the Year include:

2006: truthiness (noun)

1 : “truth that comes from the gut, not books” (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” October 2005)
2 : “the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true” (American Dialect Society, January 2006)

2005: integrity

2004: blog

2003: democracy

Notable mentions from 2003-2007:

facebook (2nd in the 2007 Word of the Year list; second company name to make it as a verb after Google)
sardoodledom (6th in the 2007 Word of the Year list)
Pecksniffian (8th in the 2007 Word of the Year list)
google (2nd in the 2006 Word of the Year list)
filibuster (4th in the 2005 Word of the Year list)
peloton (7th in the 2004 Word of the Year list)
defenestration (10th in the 2004 Word of the Year list)
quagmire (2nd in the 2003 Word of the Year list)
gubernatorial (8th in the 2003 Word of the Year list)
batten (10th in the 2003 Word of the Year list)

Honestly didn’t know what w00t meant until about a month ago when I saw it on twitter. To me, saying it makes you sound like an owl and I do prefer the words “yeay”, “hooray” or “woohoo” in expressing joy.

It seems like the word is going to be included in the online MW edition but is (as yet) unconfirmed on whether it will make it to the print version. If you really love the word, you can buy a shirt from Thinkgeek and express your joy to the world.

Besides the words Google and Facebook, have you heard of the others?

(Image courtesy of Urban Dictionary)