Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Pablo Mayrgundter (talk | contribs) at 15:08, 4 January 2008 (Describe term as a wolf-whistle to clear up usage in songs.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The term "w00t" (pronounced, and sometimes spelled, "woot"; IPA pronunciation: ) 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.

Origins

w00t is also said to be an abbreviation for "We Owned the Other Team", but this is a backronym.

The current use of w00t on the Internet traces its origins back to a popular culture 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 as a "wolf whistle" at the sighting of a voluptuous woman's posterior (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. :-)

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_

and then for the first time in its more common refinement (removing the 'h') in alt.games.doom a few days later, in a user's name:

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..

The link to Doom is interesting, as Doom itself appeared in 1993 -- the same year as the popular "whoot" rap songs -- and included a multi-player mode where players could type messages to each other during gameplay. The "w00t" form would have been faster to type, and of course more l33t.

As the term began to be used in geek settings, it has been proposed that the word gained popularity as a term for "root access." Hackers often communicated using code words to signify their progress on the machine they were attempting to compromise. The code word for root access to a PC was woot, and because of the difficulty in obtaining root access, w00t was used in a celebratory manner.

"Woot!!" is also a commonly used term in MMORPGs (massive-multiplayer-online-role-plaing-games) or RPGs (role-playing games) in general to shorten the phrase "wow loot" or 'wondrous loot' thus "woot". This term is thus associated with happiness or joy because it denotes the finding of significant wealth, treasure, or items which are desirable.

Alternative 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"). .

2007 "Word of the Year"

"W00t" was among the list of Merriam-Webster's Words 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.

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

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

2. Part 2

• Words
• Internet slang