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The term "w00t" (pronounced, and sometimes spelled, "woot"; /ˈwuːt/) is a slang interjection used to express happiness, excitement or joy, most often expressed via the Internet. The expression has been used in Usenet posts , multiplayer computer games (especially first-person shooters), the IRC and SILC chat protocols, instant messages, weblogs, and web forums.

Possible origins

Musical reference

One possible explanation for the current use of w00t on the Internet seems to trace its origins back to a popular music reference from the early 1990s. In 1993 two popular songs with similar titles and themes both rose to the top 10 of Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 popularity chart for the year. "Whoot, there it is" and "Whoomp, there it is" by rap groups 95 South and Tag Team, respectively. In both the term was used in a phrase describing pleasure at sighting the posterior of a voluptuous woman (which followed in the footsteps of the previous summer's #3 smash hit "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-A-Lot). The popularity of these songs and the phrase quickly spread to the internet in discussion of the songs and in similar discussion in alt.rap and rec.music.

However, the phrases were catching on in a larger context, as in this post about "whoot" from rec.sport.basketball.pro (nb. the citation of the Chicago Tribune newspaper):

Newsgroups: rec.sport.basketball.pro
Date: 23 Jun 1993 20:54:59 -0500
From: p...@genesis.MCS.COM (Patrick Sugent)
Subject: Re: Crowd chant at Bulls rally?
lore...@rintintin.Colorado.EDU (Eric Lorenzo) writes:
>	I taped the Bulls rally today (being from Chicago) and I was trying
>to figure out what the crowd was chanting.  I still had trouble when the
>players would start the crowd going also.  It sounded like 'Boom!  There you
>go.'  Was this some sort of rallying cry they had during the Finals?  I had
>never heard it until today.
They were saying (or so the paper says) "Whoot! There it is."  
I have no idea what this means and I have never heard it in conjunction
with the Bulls.  Apparently, it has something to do with a rap song
or some such (implied by the Tribune).  This is not exactly my area
of expertise. :-)

WOOT! is also used in many video games

After that there are more appearances of the same phrase in the sports context and increasingly as a standalone phrase in more "geeky" settings. July 11 1993 in rec.games.frp.dnd saw whoot in a DND gamer's sig:

Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1993 20:47:06 GMT
From: dhe...@mindvox.phantom.com (Double Helix)
Subject: Net.Rogues.Gallery
I think it would be interested to make a Net.Rogues.Gallery. People
could send in some of their most famous/infamous PCs and NPCs. What
does everyone think about it? Does something like this already
exist? I'd be willing to compile the list.
 -Dh*
Double Helix & Wistful
dhe...@mindvox.phantom.com  - "Whoot, there it is."

This post shows a sarcastic take on the phrase in alt.music.alternative, and predates only slightly the first solid use of whoot as a geeky slang interjective in the subject-line of this alt.cyberpunk post on Aug 8, 1993:

Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Date: 8 Aug 1993 13:52:11 -0400
From: c...@panix.com (Clay Shirky)
Subject: Whoot, there it is/NYT and the death of c-p
Just finished the NYT article about Idol, which was pretty amusing, but the
sidebar containing a McHistory of c-p is the death knell, containing such
pieces of balanced reporting as calling rtm a cyberterrorist, calling the 
internet DARPANet and saying that EFF was founded to "keep the Government off
hackers backs." 
My new "Quadratic Rip-Tide Theory of Information Channels" is that when the
volume of misinformation about a given subject is >= the square of the  
volume of real information moving in the opposite direction, the real 
information is sucked deep into a watery grave. ;-)

Further sightings repeat the new geek application of the phrase, with the double-zero "00" form appearing in November of 1994, first as wh00t on rec.skiing.snowboard:

Newsgroups: rec.skiing.snowboard
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 1994 21:17:00 -0500
From: John Paul Brzustowicz <j...@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Widowmaker CD ROM very soon
Excerpts from netnews.rec.skiing.snowboard: 19-Nov-94 Re: Widowmaker CD
ROM very .. by S...@sukmag.demon.co.uk 
> Quick Time 2.0 films, interviews with Brushie, Kelly, Haakonsen ++ So
> check your sources before you slag, ok.
Hey slick,  back up there a second....
I have that CD-ROM from Burton too, but I didn't see any interviews...
sure I saw them all riding, they got clips of that, but I never really
saw any interviews.  Maybe I missed something...
I talked to some lady at Burton, and she was saying there's all
kinds of neat stuff on the disk, like clicking in different places or
such gets neat things not otherwise seen.....anyone find any of these?
   wh00t!!!!
       Euler_

"I got root"

As the term was regularly found in "geek" settings, another suggested origin is that the word gained popularity as a term for "root access", as in "I got root access". Hackers on Unix systems would need to reach the super-user account (almost universally named 'root') on a victim's computer in order to compromise security.

The first usage of the phrase "I got root" in relation to hacking pre-dates all mention of the song "Whoomp, There It Is" by two years, and can be found in a post dated July 29, 1991:

One shot nothin!! I would have connected permanantly for 3 days and ran a  
brute force hacker on it till I got root.. 

It is suggested that this phrase became shortened through slang to the celebratory "root!" to declare a successful hack (see also pwned, another common internet phrase that derives from a hacking boast). Later it was used during competitive online games in celebration of defeating another team or achieving success, and over time mutated into 'woot' and later, (via leetspeak) 'w00t'.

Backing this theory is the following post which shows the phrase for the first time in its more common refinement (removing the 'h'). Found in alt.games.doom around the time of the music related posts. It suggests a link with "root access" and hacking ("Da W00T " being leetspeak for "The root "):

Newsgroups: alt.games.doom
Date: 24 Nov 1994 05:28:38 GMT
From: w...@access4.digex.net (Da W00T )
Subject: multiplayer game door
What does anybody know about multiplayer game doors for BBS's.. 
I investigated APCi's server MPGS  and it requires 2 machines with 2
digiboards... are there any others that people know of? if so please
EMAIL me with a response to this post... I need it ASAP...
thanks..

Backronyms

Common backronyms and erroneous explanations for the origin of 'w00t' include an acronym for "we owned the other team" (see also pwned). Although a common belief, it's likely that this idea was retro-fitted to fit the existing phrase as there is no mention of it around the time that 'w00t' became popular.(There's also no explanation why the phrase wasn't shortened to "wotot", if that's what it stood for.) It's also worth noting that there were very few team-based online FPSs in 1993 and 1994, with the Doom and Doom II dominating the genre. Common team-based online games, such as Capture the Flag, only became popular when it was added as a mod to Quake in 1996.

"Woot!!" is also a commonly used celebratory term in MMORPGs (massively-multiplayer-online-role-playing-games) or RPGs (role-playing games) in general when treasure or other desirable items are found. Some have taken this to be an abbreviation of the phrase "wow loot" or "wondrous loot". As with "we owned another team", this seems likely to be nothing more than a backronym.

Alternative historical meaning

The term, woot, was in use in Middle English literature to mean "know". The term can be found in line 849 of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale: "For wel I woot thy pacience is gon.." ("For well I know your patience will be gone"). . As such, the word is obviously related to the English word 'wit' as well as to the Dutch and German verbs 'weten' and 'wissen' 'to know' (which are ultimately related to Latin 'videre' 'to see').

2007 Word of the Year

"W00t" was Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2007. According to Merriam-Webster's president, John Morse, "w00t" was an ideal choice for the Word of the Year because it blends whimsy and new technology.

The W00terz

Another group asscosiated with the word "w00t" were a famous gropup of four boys in plymouth, Lloyd Owen, Levi O'leary, Joe Farrow and Michael Fry. They caused quite a stir of shocks when they went on a rampage around Plymouth once. Screaming "W00T!!!!!!"

External links

• Definitions for "w00t" at The Urban Dictionary
• History of the 95 South song, "Whoot There It Is"

• YouTube video of the 95 South song, "Whoot There It Is"

• An article on the history and probable derivation of the interjection
• Origins article

• Associated Press coverage in the New York Times of the Merriam-Webster announcement
• Coverage of the Word-of-the-Year announcement in the Sydney Morning Herald (accessed 13 Dec 2007)

References

1. "Merriam-Webster's Word of '07: 'W00t'". Associated Press. 2007-12-12. Retrieved 2007-12-12. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

See also

• Internet slang
• Leet
• Woot - "one deal a day" internet discount store.

2. Part 2

• Words
• Internet slang