And the word of the year is...

Drum roll please...

It's "w00t."

Okay...

"W00t," is a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness. Merriam-Webster's president, John Morse, said "w00t" was an ideal choice because it blends whimsy and new technology. "It shows a really interesting thing that's going on in language. It's a term that's arrived only because we're now communicating electronically with each other," Morse said.

It's really cool what's happening to the written word as more and more of our communication with each other becomes electronic. We're finding ways to condense language to its very essence.

We are all Hemingway when we write: "Miss U. Will b L8. LOL."

Remember when it was all about writing letters to people? I could write I love you in a letter, mail it, and by the time you got it be in love with someone else. Now, I can tell someone I don't "luv" them anymore with my blackberry... which is pretty convenient in-between meetings.

Personally, I think that the honour of the word of the year should have gone to the verb "Facebook" as in "I'll facebook you," or the word "creep," as in "Yo, you're such a creep, stop looking at her profile." Perhaps "creepin" would have been a better choice, as in "yo, stop creepin her page man that's weird."

Facebook. Now that's a blog entry on its own.

Happy Holidays.

J