Lesson in Netspeak: Woot

Dealing with extremely strange shorthand comments in message boards and online games occasionally you stumble upon things that simply don't make sense. After seeing "woot" typed a thousand times I had to spend time figuring out what the hell it meant.

For reference I call this strange language Netspeak. This particular language, for which a name had to be created, is the collection of idiotic abbreviations of words and expressions that make no sense outside of chatrooms.

Today's lesson is on the expression 'woot'. Once again Google comes through:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=189002

Usually expressions of joy are your basic 'yes', 'yeah', or Simpsons-esque 'woo-hoo'. Most of these expressions are onomatopoeic. I have a hard time picturing someone yelling this supposed word. On Wikipedia someone actually had the stones to write that 'woot' is the only proper spelling.

Tell you what everyone- random arrangements of letters with no entry in any dictionary have no proper spelling.

(Yes, I had absolutely no other ideas for today)