w00t
- "Woot" redirects here. For other uses, see WOOT (disambiguation).
The term "w00t" is a slang interjection used to express happiness or excitement, usually over the Internet. The expression is most popular on USENET posts [1], multiplayer computer games (especially first-person shooters), IRC chats, and instant messages, though use on the World Wide Web in the form of weblogs or in forums is by no means uncommon.
Origins
w00t comes to us via a strange path through music and culture. In 1993, two songs with amazingly similar titles both rose to the top 10 of Billboard's hot tracks for the year. "Whoomp, there it is," and "Whoot, there it is" by rap groups Tag Team and 95 South, respectively, were both describing their pleasure at sighting the posterior of a voluptuous woman (see also badonkadonk). These songs followed in the footsteps of the previous summer's #3 smash hit "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-A-Lot. Similar phrases quickly showed up on the Internet in discussion of the songs and in similar discussion in the newsgroups alt.rap and rec.music.
Another, although less popular, explanation for the origins of the phrase "w00t" is from the role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons w00t is a combination of the phrase "weapons and loot," "wonderous loot," or "Wow, loot!" which were typically the rewards from quests or slaying of monsters. Over time the reward was shortened to w00t.
Yet another possible origin of the w00t is that upon getting a successful connection, computer hackers would shout "root". Through the process of memetic drift, this phrase became the w00t it is today.
Another common belief is that it originated from the acronym of the phrase "We Owned the Other Team" from first-person shooters (fps), first appearing as a motto for a Quake clan, which then was used later by gamers in other games such as Counter-Strike.
Some people also think "w00t" derives from the german word "Wut"- which means the same as "anger" and is often used in computer matches to emphasize ones own rage.
And then there are some who heard "Woot Woot" as part of a "raising the roof" gesture so popular in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and translated that into typing that as w00t.
Further, though perhaps not derived from, Woot appears in Douglas Adams's Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (his trilogy in 4 (now 5) parts).
It is also important to note the popular movement to spell common words in a different manner, with alterations such as "phat"(for "fat") and "deez"(for "these") spawned from a rapidly growing graffiti culture in urban America. This tendency to make common words signature was quickly picked up by chatroom culture. Words like Wut, which could be perceived as coming directly from German (as mentioned above) could just as likely been alterations of "what" So that the lexical morphology of such pronunciation merges from "what" to "w00t" through such an evolution: "what -> whut -> wut -> woot -> w00t". The final spelling having the mighty push of leetspeak, or "1337" behind it, replacing the vowels with numbers. The use of this word also parallels the elongation of the word what, verbally ("whaaaaat"). This has carried on even in contemporary music by the likes of L'il Jon with his various stand-alone phrases like "Okay!", "Yea!" and "What!" emphasized as a long syllable reproducing the "woot!", for example.
See also
External links
- The Jargon File offers their definition of the word.
- freality.org History of w00t page.