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"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 , 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 the strange path of 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 borrowed the topic 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.

A range of post-hoc explanations or folk etymologies of the origin of w00t exist, which have possibly influenced its use among certain groups:

• In the world of online shopping w00t is commonly used to abreviate the phrase "want one of those" when describing the desire for a particularly attractive item, usually a technical gadget.

• In the role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, w00t has been variously interpreted as combinations of the phrases "weapons and loot," "wonderous loot," or "Wow, loot!", that were supposedly contracted to "w00t".

• Another common belief is that it originated from the acronym of the phrase "We Owned Other Team" from first-person shooter games (fps), first appearing as a motto for a Quake clan, which then was used later by gamers in other games such as Counter-Strike.

• It has also been suggested that "w00t" derives from the German "Wut", meaning "rage" which would then be used by computer gamers to express their excitement.

• Another interpretation sees the term coming from "root", analogously to Elmer Fudd's pronunciation of wabbit. The logic behind this would be that leetspeak originated from crackers, and that root privileges (which allow a user full control over a computer) are the object of a cracker's activities.

• The exclamation "Woot Woot" was part of a "raising the roof" gesture that was popular in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and it has been suggested that this was translated into typing as "w00t".

Further, Woot appears in Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (his trilogy in 4 (now 5) parts), though that is not suggested as the origin of the term.

It is also important to note the popular movement among Internet chat room, messaging service and cellphone text message users to spell common words deliberately incorrectly, with alterations such as "phat" (for "fat") and "deez" (for "these") spawned from a rapidly growing graffiti culture in urban America.

Usages

The term "w00t" has many usages, some of which have been explained above. The most common usage of "w00t" means "hooray!", "woohoo!", and "YEEEESSSSS!!!!". Other variations include the Dungeons & Dragons form mentioned above and the First Person Shooter form, although that has been mostly replaced by the word "ownage" (a similar and more commonly used word is pwn (past tense: pwned, pwnd, pwn'd, pwnt)). Less intense meanings include "cool" and "okay." Example: "Are you ready to own the other team?" "w00t."

Or "w00t j00 h4v3 b33n pwn3d!"

w00t is also commonly used in online role playing games such as RuneScape as an expression of happiness and excitement. Such as "W00t level 46 woodcutting!!!! =D"

See also

• leet
• Woot.com - ecommerce web site taking its name from this phrase

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