Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said "w00t" reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and mobile phone text-messaging. It's like saying "yay," the dictionary said. "It could be after a triumph  or for no reason at all," Merriam-Webster said. Visitors to Merriam-Webster's Web site were invited to vote for one of 20 words and phrases selected from the most frequently looked-up words on the site and submitted by readers. Merriam-Webster President John Morse said "w00t" reflected the growing use of numeric keyboards to type words. "People look for self-evident numeral-letter substitutions: 0 for O; 3 for E; 7 for T; and 4 for A," he said. "This is simply a different and more efficient way of representing the alphabetical character." Online gamers often replace numbers and symbols with letters to form what Merriam-Webster calls an "esoteric computer hacker language" known as "l33t speak." This translates into "leet," which is short for "elite."   One Web site, www.thinkgeek.com, already sells T-shirts with the word "w00t" printed on the front. Runner-up was "facebook" as a new verb meaning to add someone to a list of friends on the Web site Facebook.com or to search for people on the social networking site.  "Truthiness" was the word of last year picked by Webster. A separate survey of words used in the media and on the Internet by California-based Global Language Monitor produced a different set of winners last week. "Hybrid" took top honors as word of the year with "climate change" the top phrase. Runner-up was "surge," based on the "surge" of 30,000 extra U.S. troops deployed to Iraq since mid-June, followed by the word "Bluetooth," a technology used to connect electronic devices via radio waves. "The English language is becoming more and more a globalized language every year," said Global Language Monitor president Paul Payack, noting that this year's list included words also selected from India, Singapore, China and Australia. In which column of the newspaper could this passage be read ?
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