It would seem that 2004 was a terrible year for words -- according to Merriam-Webster Online, the year's most monumentally defining word was "blog." Despite such strong contenders as whimsical "peloton" or maniacal-whilst-dignified "defenestration," the so-called logophiles congregating at the site instead opted again and again and again for the squat, the deflated, the narcissistic.[1] It would seem that 2004 was a nadir of sorts, future word lists never again deigning to reach such uninspired, self-referential, outdated, mouth-breathing lows.

It would seem that I was wrong.

As 2007 pinwheeled through its last few circadian cycles, the fine wordsmiths at M-W clacked their collective fizzling synapses together, finally emerging this week with one word to rule them all -- a word so fresh, so relevant, so simultaneously scintillating and intriguing that it cannot be confined to mere letters, rising above them like cream (or my eyebrows) in a rallying cry as swift and ebullient as the word itself:

w00t.

Oh, god. It's obvious what's going on, so why beat around the bush with this? If Merriam-Webster had any cojones at all, they would have just gone all out and proclaimed LOLCAT the word of the year. At least that would have been timely -- "w00t" first crawled across my Instant Messenger window almost eight years ago, and I'm pretty sure even then I was late to the game. But no, instead M-W's gonna go frag madd n00bs, Leeroy Jenkins-style. Ugh. Even the explanation of the word's etymology (no doubt to assuage the hordes of literary-types who are likely scratching their heads about now) is just too precious for words.

It's like watching a movie written by someone who's never functionally been around a computer before. "Oh noes, they've hacked the internet! We must be dealing with some elite hackers here; let's get the FBI on the line to decode their delicate esoteric language." It probably stars Jodie Foster and Gene Hackman. Ugh.

So once again, it's time to turn to Oxford to straighten this nonsense out, rolling up the paltry "w00t" and tossing it aside like so much garbage. What to offer in its place? Try this one on for size: locavore.

Yeah, you heard me. Locavore.

Like a downtown underground nightclub, "locavore" (alternately, "localvore") is so hip that, by the time people start writing about it, it's already on its way to epically-latered. Coined two years ago in San Francisco, it refers to an organic-offshoot movement encouraging folks to help their health and the environment by making a conscious effort to buy local.

With two years behind it, enough time to start a movement while still quite able to benefit from the publicity of its title, "locavore" certainly retains the satisfactory freshness that being Word of the Year requires (or ought to require, anyway). It also has that luscious multisyllabic root-word charm, for hose of us who enjoy a little gratuitous pedantry now and then. All that remains to be proven is whether or not it is socially relevant -- and, given that it marries global footprint concerns with a newfound interest in dining, I don't see how it could possibly be any less.

As an American institution, I hate to have to call out Merriam-Webster, but come on -- the British are making us look bad, and I know you can do better than this. In 2005, the word of the year was "integrity."

Show some.



[1] I don't blog; I write. Natch.

[2] Like a bottle of fine wine imbibed all at once, you can't keep a good _DictionaryGirl_ down.