As a discourse analyst by trade, I have been fascinated by language and the Internet. For me, leet has always been the register of gamers and of hackers. Blame it on new and traditional media perhaps but these specialized registers have now become accessible to those who have access. Math jargon have now become popular thanks to Numb3rs. And everyone can now give differential diagnoses thanks to House. Thanks to Wikipedia, everyone’s an expert on everything.

We’re always quite amazed by how dictionaries have accommodated new words especially those spawned by technology. Merriam-Webster has been quite open to such lexical items and they’ve just given ‘w00t’ the Word of the Year Award for 2007.

For those of you who don’t know what the heck ‘w00t’ is, here’s the definition:

1. w00t (interjection)
expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word “yay”

w00t! I won the contest!
Submitted by: Kat from Massachusetts on Nov. 30, 2005 23:18

Take note that it’s not simply ‘woot’ but it is written in leet - a combination of alphanumeric characters that can for or substitute standard spelling in English. So does this mean that Merriam-Webster is now acknowledging leet as an acceptable spelling code?

Source: Digital Inspiration