Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Slow variation in the pitch of a sound reproduction resulting from variations in the speed of the recording or reproducing equipment.
  • interjection Used to express wonder, amazement, or great pleasure.
  • noun An outstanding success.
  • transitive verb To have a strong, usually pleasurable effect on.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • An exclamation of pleasure, surprise, or wonder.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • interjection An indication of excitement or surprise.
  • interjection An expression of amazement or awe.
  • verb To amaze or awe.
  • noun An exceptionally surprising or unbelievable fact.
  • proper noun video games World of Warcraft, a computer based MMORPG.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a joke that seems extremely funny
  • verb impress greatly

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Imitative.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

'Wow' is Scottish in origin. It appears in the poems of Allan Ramsay the poet (1686–1758) and of Robert Burns as in "And, wow! Tam saw an unco sight!" - 'Tam o' Shanter' poem. The word is probably a contraction of the interjection 'I vow!'. The word travelled to America where it took root and returned to the U.K. probably in the 20th century.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Acronym

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Examples

  • The costs wow powerlevel only keep piling up as you progress in levels, making gold world of warcraft power leveling farming one of the most arduous and boring tasks a player is challenged with.,wow leveling wow leveling。

    El Orfanato Rogers 2008

  • The costs wow powerlevel only keep piling up as you progress in levels, making gold world of warcraft power leveling farming one of the most arduous and boring tasks a player is challenged with.,wow leveling wow leveling。

    Lunch Conversations #4223: Getting In on the Ground Floor Rogers 2007

  • The costs wow powerlevel only keep piling up as you progress in levels, making gold world of warcraft power leveling farming one of the most arduous and boring tasks a player is challenged with.,wow leveling wow leveling。

    Pre-Production Day 6-8 (edited) Rogers 2007

  • The costs wow powerlevel only keep piling up as you progress in levels, making gold world of warcraft power leveling farming one of the most arduous and boring tasks a player is challenged with.,wow leveling wow leveling。

    Apple's market cap will exceed IBM's 2007

  • The costs wow powerlevel only keep piling up as you progress in levels, making gold world of warcraft power leveling farming one of the most arduous and boring tasks a player is challenged with.,wow leveling wow leveling。

    Video IPod: 4GM Baby Steps Rogers 2005

  • At last it cries, _Bow, wow, wow_; and I concluded it must be Mr. _Saunderson_'s Dog, which had followed me from their

    Goody Two-Shoes A Facsimile Reproduction of the Edition of 1766 Anonymous

  • [Illustration] _Bow wow, wow_, says the Dog at the Door.

    Goody Two-Shoes A Facsimile Reproduction of the Edition of 1766 Anonymous

  • At this Instant something was heard to slap at the Window, _Wow, wow, wow_, says Jumper, and attempted to leap up and open the Door, at which the Children were surprized; but Mrs. _Margery_ knowing what it was, opened the Casement, as _Noah_ did the Window of the

    Goody Two-Shoes A Facsimile Reproduction of the Edition of 1766 Anonymous

  • "Bow, wow, _wow_!" exclaimed Cuffy in tones which there could be no mistaking, although the broken twigs and herbage which covered the mouth of the pit muffled them a good deal, and accounted for the strangeness of the creature's howls when heard at a distance.

    Jarwin and Cuffy 1859

  • this (at 8: 33) high bar routine from a japanese gymnast. my mouth drops open, agog at the amazing feats of mid-air acrobatics. me: wow …. .wow … * wow*!!! did you see that?!? noble savage: I alway find that really shocking too.

    Jen's Den of Iniquity 2008

Comments

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  • MOM in the mirror! Wow!

    December 2, 2007

  • Um... Isn't MOM in the mirror just... MOM? If you want WOW, you need only turn it upside down, no mirror needed.

    December 5, 2007

  • Not if you place the mirror above or below the word.

    March 27, 2008

  • I was not aware words existed in the third dimension

    July 31, 2008

  • Acronym of World of Wordiecraft, an addictive online experience where pasty-faced nerds stalk each other with barbed lexemes.

    November 18, 2008

  • Uh, WeirdNet...what??

    November 18, 2008

  • C'mon reesetee, tell us a joke!

    November 18, 2008

  • Okay, here's one: Wow.

    November 18, 2008

  • World of Warcraft and Guitar Hero are both properties of the company Activision Blizzard.

    January 17, 2009

  • You *butt*holes. Leave me alone!

    May 23, 2009

  • Wow!: What someone usually says when suprised. WoW: An acronym for the game World of Warcraft. (Where people usually make fools of themselves and become addicted to something that is obviously not real)..wait..there are real people that play..and that you type and/or talk to..so..it's real..but it's not real????..wow.

    July 7, 2009

  • Arghh, I wanted to go to six flags and be a pirate this summer but mom got me this crummy free wow download.

    July 7, 2009

  • When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears

    with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were.. When they were growing up; walking Twenty-five miles to school every morning

    barefoot....Uphill...BOTH ways - In the snow... Yadda, yadda, yadda And I remember promising myself that when I grew up,

    there was no way in hell I was going to lay

    a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it

    and how easy they've got it!

    But now that... I'm over the ripe old age of

    fifty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a virtual Utopia!

    And I hate to say it but you kids today you

    don't know how good you've got it! I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, We had to go to the county library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!!!

    There was no email!!! We had to actually write

    somebody a letter, with a pen!

    Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!

    Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! No where was safe!

    There were no MP3' s or Napsters! You wanted to

    steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talked over the beginning and @#*% it all up!

    There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished and the tape would come undone quite often.

    We didn't have fancy features like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either!

    When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school,

    your mom, your boss, your Bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you

    just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

    We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video

    games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games

    like 'Space Invaders', 'Pong' and 'asteroids'. You

    actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or

    screens, it was just one screen

    forever!

    And you could never win. The game just kept getting

    harder and harder and

    faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE !

    You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off

    your keister and walk over to the TV to change the channel! No remote control either. There was no

    Cartoon Network! You could only get cartoons

    on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying?! We had to wait ALL WEEK

    for cartoons, you spoiled

    little brats! And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove's oven ... Imagine that!

    That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids

    today have got it too easy.

    You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted

    five minutes back in 1970 or before !

    July 7, 2009

  • To put that more succinctly, "Get off my lawn!"

    July 8, 2009

  • *yawn* Heard it all before. Gets less interesting, more of a generalisation and more offensive ("You don't know how lucky you are your parents don't beat you"? Really?) every time.

    Although, I must say "You don't know how lucky you are to have caller ID!!" is a new one.

    July 8, 2009

  • Wow.

    July 9, 2009