As many of you know, or probably as many of you don’t, Merriam-Webster asks the public to vote upon a “Word of the Year” each year. Past years words have included: integrity, blog and democracy which have all reflected strong words that help to define the year in which they were voted winners. Last year word, truthiness, means something that is true from the gut or something that you wish to be true. While not being commonplace the word does have its uses and is still a word in the traditional sense of letters strung together to form a thought. However, there has been a disturbing change in the culture between last year and this, for this year’s word of the year is officially “w00t”.

That’s right folks; this year’s word of the year is not actually a word at all but rather a combination of letter s and numbers. This new language, called l33t (short for leet or in normal people speak, elite) is used by computer hackers and online gamers. The actual definition of the so called word is one of joy and similar to the word “yay”. I have a serious problem with this word being the word of the year for 2007 because of three reasons, which (luckily for you) I will elucidate below.

The first reason is fairly obvious; it’s not a freaking word! Word are made up of letters, numbers are made up of numbers. There are no words that contain numbers; those would be called….wait for it…..wait for it…… Bigger numbers! So how can you have a word made up of two letters and two numbers? You can’t. It’s asinine, ridiculous, ludicrous, and preposterous. First of all it makes no sense, and secondly can’t we think up a word that actually is a word?! No wonder other countries hate us.

The second reason is also fairly obvious; this “word” is from a made up language! That’s right, not only is it not a word it is a made up word from a made up language! Awesome! This is how this word was born, two preteen boys are sitting around their computer playing WOW and say to each other, “Yay! I totally just owned that guy’s elf! Did you see that?” “I did. But “yay” is so elementary school, I think we should make up a word.” “How about adding numbers in it?” “That would be awesome!” “How about the word “w00t”?” “W00t w00t!” And then the language was born. We should be really proud of our fellow countrymen for selecting such a great example of our intelligence.

The third and final reason is that there were real, legitimate, unique, and intelligence words to chose from. Words such as: conundrum, quixotic, and apathetic. And what did we pick? We pick w00t! Freaking w00t! It makes me ashamed to live here where such a grouping of symbols would even be considered a word. I mean, what is wrong with this country when “w00t” is selected as the word of the year? Unfortunately students and children everywhere will feel that it is OK to write things in that moronic text messaging language, making letters and number interchangeable. It is a sad state for our country and shows just how sad and pathetic we have become. On the bright side, at least the majority of people using words such as w00t can’t vote. Yet. Heaven help us when they can.