Disruptive Conversations

Okay, maybe I'm just a linguistic pedant, but I just don't find myself sharing Julia Roy's joy at the fact that Merriam-Webster has annointed "w00t" (with the zeroes) their "Word of the Year" for 2007! But then again, I didn't really like "ginormous" being added to the M-W dictionary, either. I know, I know... "languages evolve"... I should just deal with it. Sigh.

To be fair, M-W is not adding "w00t" to their "official" dictionary - at least not yet - and this "Word of the Year" was "based on votes of visitors to our Web site", which of course will skew any poll that you run. (Although it is in their online "Open Dictionary".) I did enjoy some of the runner-ups on Merriam-Webster's list. Somewhat predictable that "facebook" would be on there, but fun to see "conundrum" and "quixotic".

I think, though, the M-W folks are showing their age when they talk about "l33t" being "an esoteric computer hacker language". They obviously have not spent any time with teenagers who are madly texting each other. (Although I suppose those who wish to get pedantic about Leet might say that texting and true "leetspeak" are different, but I'd argue there's a good bit of crossover.) It does, however, warm this linguist's heart to see someone actually using "esoteric". Nice word.

Ah, the joy of language! w00t!

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