"w00t" crowned word of year by U.S. dictionary?

Question

What is this world coming too? Why can't we teach our kids how to speak and spell English properly and grammatically correct? Why must we suffer anymore with these juvenile phrases?

How is w00t a word, it contains numbers - not letters!

Answer 1

Are you serious? That's silly. I couldn't believe that they put bling in the dictionary. I guess they feel that they have to include all colloquialisms and slang terms, so that future generations aren't deprived of the joy that w00t brings.

Answer 2

*laughing at the first answer* So clever!

Language is always changing and coming up with new words. Consider what would have happened if English stopped coming up with new vocabulary, say, in the time of Shakespeare. We wouldn't have such useful words as automobile, refrigerator, and computer. We'd have to keep referring to things as "the horseless carriage" and "the box in the kitchen that keeps things cold by electricity."

Okay, obviously I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek, but honestly adding new words to the language is nothing to be afraid of. In fact, adding the word to the dictionary is a sign that it has been in use already for some time.

Chances are that what you don't like about this word is that it's used by a group of people that you don't belong to. That's fine; you don't have to use it. By the way, many of the things that people do that break grammar rules have been part of English grammar since before the rule existed. Check out the topic "history of prescriptivism" on Google if you want to know more.

Answer 3

Languages are always changing. Languages that don't are called dead. w00t is also used by speakers of other languages in the Gaming Community.

Answer 4

I stopped caring about that Merriam-Webster listing about the time they put bootylicious.

Answer 5

LOL, that is so 1337 we geeks pwned Webster.