Just in time to put it to work during holiday celebrations, we�ve got a Word of the Year, thanks to the dictionary folks at Merriam-Webster -- and it's one many adults never heard of and never will use. The offbeat word is w00t, written with two zeroes and pronounced "whoot" (rhymes with hoot).
Merriam-Webster editors, who say it got the most online votes among 20 finalists, define the word as "expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word 'yay.' "

There�s a few versions of how w00t originated. It may have come from role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons or World of Warcraft, perhaps as an exuberant abbreviation for We Own the Other Team. Others believe it comes from the phrase "wow loot" used in other multiplayer games, or began as hackers' jargon describing a system break-in. Apparently the zeroes were added to make the word look cooler.
Words of the Year go into the company�s Open Dictionary and may wind up in the printed version if they seem to gain longevity. After the latest choice was announced last week, one spoilsport wondered why it took 17 years to honor a word spoken by Julia Roberts in the 1990 film Pretty Woman -- where she startles swanky pals of her date (Richard Gere) with a hearty "Woot, woot, woot!" at a polo match.

A Merriam Webster�s president says w00t is an ideal choice for its fifth Word of the Year because it blends whimsy and new technology. "It shows a really interesting thing that's going on in language,� explains John Morse. �It's a term that's arrived only because we're now communicating electronically with each other."
The runner-up in his online poll was "facebook," used as a verb referring to any activity done on the popular social network site � as in "I facebooked her." Another study tracking 2007 language use listed "surge" (as in troop surge), "hybrid", "climate change" and "Bluetooth" as popping up more often in writing and speech.

Previous winner: "Truthiness" was 2006 Word of the Year after it was popularized by Stephen Colbert on his cable TV news satire show The Colbert Report. Webster�s defines it as things a person claims to know intuitively or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination or facts.

Journalist says: "Merriam-Webster sure left me scratching my head. The Word of the Year selection left me feeling, well, anything but w00t." -- Jeff Hage, managing editor of The Daily Journal in Fergus Falls, Minn.

Professor says: "It's amusing, but it's limited to a small community and unlikely to spread and unlikely to last." -- Allan Metcalf, English professor at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill.