Grammar Girl here, everyone else seems to be announcing a word of the year, so I've decided

to name a pet peeve of the year.

After a non-sign to fix study of the messages I get from listeners, I've determined the

pet peeve of 2006 is the phrase went missing, boy do a lot of you hate that phrase.

Before I talk about went missing, here's a fun review of some of the other words of the

year.

In a spurt of silliness, Merriam Webster named Woot, the word of the year, yes that's

Woot spelled W-Zero-Zero-T, with zeros where the O's should be.

And it's an interjection expressing joy, making it similar to the word yay!

According to Merriam Webster, Woot first became popular in competitive online gaming forums,

as part of what's known as LeetSpeak, an esoteric computer hacker language in which numbers

and symbols are put together to look like letters.

It's an odd choice for Woot of the Year, but I confess I did shout Woot when I finished

the final version of my grammar girl book manuscript a couple of weeks ago, and my editor

was polite enough to Woot back at me.

In other word of the year news, Webster's word of the year was Grass Station, which they

define as a pun on the word gas station.

According to Webster's Grass Station refers to a theoretical fill-up spot in the not-too-distant

future.

It reflects America's growing love affair with hybrid cars in vegetable-based fuels, including

ethanol and biomass fuels, some of which are actually distilled from plain old grass.

Finally, the Oxford American Dictionary named Locavore as word of the year.

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