Daniel C. wrote: > While usage does drive the English language, most people recognize > that a compromise between popular usage and historical precedence are > what determine "correct" English. If we threw out precedence in favor > of usage I could type any collection of characters and consider it > proper English because hey, that's how I use it, so it's right. > > I also have to ask which dictionary "w00t" is in. There is no "The > Dictionary" in English, unless perhaps you mean the Oxford English > Dictionary, and I don't have a complete copy of that on hand to > reference.
Fortunately "w00t" has indeed not yet made it into the OED. I think I remember an NPR piece on new words that were added to the 2009 edition (a thousand words if I recall) and they mentioned how they unanimously rejected a lot of this jargon garbage. Well on the subject of language garbage, recently the word "fail" has been used in ever-increasing ridiculous ways. Such as "epic fail" or "you fail" and other such nonsense. Reminds one of the stereotypical foreigner struggling with English verbs. It's definitely ignorant. Ahh well. Guess I gotta yell at kids on my lawn as well. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
