My daughter Katie has been saying ‘Woot‘ a lot recently. Confused at first, I’ve learned it’s a good thing. A positive exclamation. An interjection! I thought it was something unique to her and her friends, but as my friend, Chuq Yang pointed out in his blog, Merriam-Webster included ‘Woot’ among their top ten Favorite Words (That Are Not in the Dictionary). The Urban Dictionary has 53 definitions of ‘woot’. I have tried to start using it, but I think Katie’s embarrassed when I do and I’d hate to be responsible for ruining this non-word for her.
There’s another bit of evolutionary language that we’ve watched spread into common usage among our children and their friends; versing. They have taken the preposition versus, and turned it into a verb. Now I’m no anal-grammarian or anything (I just had to look preposition up, I sure don’t remember it among my Schoolhouse Rock favorites, but I guess there was one). But hearing my son say something like, “Today we’re versing that team that beat us before”, still kinda grates on me. Apparently this isn’t a local phenomenon either, they’re versing down under as well.
update: in the comments; Katie insists that the proper spelling is ‘Whoot‘, and Ben has pointed out a good article on w00t in Wikipedia.