Soulforged

Always thought it was "We Own the Other team"

__________________


Dies Irae, Dies Illa Solvet Cosmos in Favilla
Vocamus Te Aeshma-Diva

Letum

Same.

__________________
This is the art of ruin
This is the resolution
The end of all progress
The death of evolution
It bleeds all life away

Laalon

I'm gonna call it W0t0T from now on....instead of W00t

__________________

Feefai

woot doesn't stand for anything.

It started in Quake 2 - that was the noise the default grunt character made every time the player jumped. I played Q2 lithium CTF avidly when it was catching on and thats how it was explained to me back in '98. At first it just sounded like the usual exhale noise, but if you bunny hopped it started sounding like your character was saying 'woot woot woot woot woot'

tracheaspider

"Woot," in good memetic fashion, probably didn't have any one of the supposed origins; possibly it had them all. Exclamations tend to catch on because we like them and to wholly adopt them we unconsciously apply them to our own situation. We make up origins that suit ourselves without even realizing it.

The most authentic origin probably isn't knowable, but the word's spread makes sense. "Woot" sounds good. It's a friendly word. It fits in with preceding, similar exclamations such as "woohoo." It's a good candidate for survival in the language on these attributes alone. The origin stories are just a way to explain to ourselves in a more logical and pure fashion why we like and use this particular word.

And while none of the origins might be true in the objective sense, they still have enough potency to leave marks, such as the variant spelling with 0's in place of o's. Instead of arguing over the origin, it makes more sense to take the word for what it is now: a useful piece of language that's passed through the hands of many.