Surprisingly enough Merriam-Webster's #1 Word of the Year for 2004 was 'blog.' For 2005 it was 'integrity' and for 2006, 'truthiness.' For the wonderful year of 2007 Merriam-Webster once again hosted a contest for the public to help pick the Words of the Year. The #1 Word of the Year for 2007 is 'woot' or 'w00t' to most on-line gamers, which is just where the word originated.
W00t was first seen in competitive on-line gaming forums as part of a language used by hackers using numbers and letters to make up words. Woot can either be spelled with two o's or two 0's, or zeros. In addition it can also be used as an exclamation to express excitement etc. Some others say it means "we owned the other team" which is a second reference to it's use in gaming.
Last year I was introduced to a website, simply, www.woot.com, which sells only one item a day with limited supplies. I'm not entirely sure how it is related or if it is at all, but still interesting.
To find out what words to pick from, Merriam-Webster tracks the usage of new and popular words. They also have to gather citations and examples. Thousands of people voted in this year's contest. With growing popularity I can see many more people voting or tuning in for the next Word of the Year.
The nine other words rounding up the top 10 for 2007 include: facebook, conundrum, quixotic, blamestorm, sardoodledom, apathetic, Pecksniffian, hypocrite, and charlatan. To find out the meanings of these woods you can visit the Word of the Year pages. Also visit the home site, linked at the top, to see the Word of the Day, and many more options.
Also check out an article by Wired about the Word of the Year.
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