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In other news...

The good people at Webster's have chosen their "Word Of The Year."

Reuters has an article about it, and, of course, you can see the official announcement over at m-w.com.

So what is the word?

W00t!

No, really. It's "w00t." Which they have correctly spelled with two zeroes.

What can I say?

Uhm... "W00t!"?

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Bwahahaha! Ole' Pop Webster is really trying to get hip, is he not?

Of course, now "squick", "squee" and "glomp" are feeling discriminated against. Especially since they comprise entirely of the alphabet.

*pets Webster*

Imma be grousing about this. I voted for charlatan.

w00t! lol! so funny. i'm surprised it's still popular. it was THE word back in high school.

*blink*

*blink*

*clears throat* well then.

it is a useful word tho, so i guess i cant complain too much.

Okay, I like w00t, I use w00t. Nothing against w00t. But:

"People look for self-evident numeral-letter substitutions: 0 for O; 3 for E; 7 for T; and 4 for A," he said. "This is simply a different and more efficient way of representing the alphabetical character."

...I agree that using the numbers is a "different way" of representing the alphabetical characters. Sure. But I have to argue: It is not a "more efficient way" to represent the alphabetical characters. The MOST EFFICIENT WAY would be to use THE ACTUAL ALPHABET to represent alphabetical characters.

Am I right, here?

Well, in this case, you're using 0 instead of o. It's a 1-to-1 substitution, so technically neither one is more efficient. Or, yeah, I guess o would be more efficient since the reader doesn't have to pause and decipher it.

On the other hand, l8r is more efficient because the 8 substitutes for three whole letters.

*chuckles* Ridiculousness!

Are there any OTHER words in the dictionary that are spelled with numbers in this fashion???

W00t evolved out of l33tspeak, which itself started off with simple chatspeak. Things like l8r and such. (You probably knew that, but the phrasing of your post is ambiguous.)

But w00t isn't actually in the dictionary. It's in the "open dictionary" which is kind of a wiki-ish thing. But it isn't an official word that you'd find in the regular dictionary. Though they say that having won the Word Of The Year poll (they narrowed it down to 20, and then had users vote), it's got a better chance for inclusion next year. We'll see.

So... no. No words in the dictionary spelled with numbers. Yet.

As for rediculousness... that's what you get when you leave the decision up to internet voters.

Ahh, I see.
I did know its origin. What I didn't know is that it wasn't an actual, standard dictionary. The thought of a standard dictionary containing words spelled with numbers... THAT was the ridiculousness.
The fact that that "word" would win a poll, ESPECIALLY an online one, wasn't surprising at all. :)
Hey, depending on other entries, I might have voted for it myself. ;)

There's more info over at the official announcement.

The word you've selected hasn't found its way into a regular Merriam-Webster dictionary yet—but its inclusion in our online Open Dictionary, along with the top honors it's now been awarded—might just improve its chances.

(No idea why they used dashes there, especially the second one. I guess they're concerned with individual words rather than full sentences and proper punctuation. ;) )

You can also see the rest of the top ten on that page. Coming in second was Facebook, as a verb.

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