Noob could be millionth English word

by Lesley Smith on May 12th 2009 9:00AM

Every gamer, at some point, has been called a noob. It's almost a rite of passage and it's not unique to MMOs either. Indeed such is the power of this simple word, which is short for newbie, that it could well become the millionth word in the English language.

MSN are reporting that the Global Language Monitor (we've never heard of them either) have predicted that at the rate the English language is growing, the millionth word will arrive at approximately 10:22am British Summer Time on June 10th. How they can be this exact we don't know but various British newspapers, including tabloids like The Sun, to more reputable papers like The Independent, have decided that word is going to be 'noob'. Personally I was hoping for a brand new word rather than one that's been around for so long but we shall see.

Source

Tags: global-language-monitor, millionth-word, noob, noobs, noobz

Reader Comments (4)

You probably would hope for a new word, wouldn't ya, newb?

1 million words zomg!
wonder if Contrafribularites, anispeptic, frasmotic, compunctuous, pericombobulation have made it in

(wonder who can make the connection of these words without google ;) )

There's a typo in there. Person, Pesron ?

I feel that noob (or n00b; with zeroes for o's) is the derogatory version of newbie. A newbie is someone that may be ignorant but is not stupid and is actively trying to learn. A noob is someone too lazy to perform any research or work on their own and just asks inane questions or asks to have it done for them; what class is best? where is an (easily located) NPC? will you power-level me? etc.

I do not mind being a newbie in a game but a noob? Never! :-P