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Merriam-Webster has named "w00t" the word of the year for 2007. W00t! President John Morse says that it’s the "ideal choice because it blends whimsy and new technology."

"It shows a really interesting thing that’s going on in language. It’s a term that’s arrived only because we’re now communicating electronically with each other," he said.

Allan Metcalf of the American Dialect Society isn’t too fired up about it. "It’s amusing, but it’s limited to a small community and unlikely to spread and unlikely to last." That’s a ridiculous thing to say, said by a silly man who thinks that all of us l33t hax0rs around the world only make up a "small community".

Merriam-Webster’s Word of ‘07: ‘W00t’ [ABC News]