New York: w00t, an interjection often used in online gaming, has been selected as "Word of the Year" by Merriam-Webster, a publisher of dictionaries and reference books, though it is yet to find acceptance in the regular dictionary.

But after patrons voted for it, Merriam-Webster accepted for its online open dictionary improving its chances of getting into the dictionaries. w00t expresses joy -- it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word "yay".

Merriam-Webster said the vast majority of patrons chose the small word that packs a pretty big punch. The word 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 honours it's now been awarded might just improve its chances.

This year's winning word first became popular in competitive online gaming forums as part of what is known as l33t ("leet," or "elite") spoken esoteric computer hacker language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters.

Although the double "o" in the word is usually represented by double zeroes, the exclamation is also known to be an acronym for "we owned the other team" again stemming from the gaming community. Usage: w00t I won the contest.

Source : PTI