Leet

Leet, also known as eleet or leetspeak, is an alternative alphabet for the English language that is used primarily on the Internet. It uses various combinations of ASCII characters to replace Latinate letters. For example, leet spellings of the word leet include 1337 and l33t; eleet may be spelled 31337 or 3l33t.

The term leet is derived from the word elite. The leet alphabet is a specialized form of symbolic writing. Leet may also be considered a substitution cipher, although many dialects or linguistic varieties exist in different online communities.

The term leet is also used as an adjective to describe formidable prowess or accomplishment, especially in the fields of online gaming and in its original usage, computer hacking.

History

Leet originated within bulletin board systems in the 1980s, where having "elite" status on a bulletin board system (BBS) allowed a user access to file folders, games, and special chat rooms. One theory is that it was developed to defeat text filters created by BBS or Internet Relay Chat system operators for message boards to discourage the discussion of forbidden topics, like cracking and hacking. Some consider emoticons and ASCII art, like smiley faces, to be leet, while others maintain that leet consists of only symbolic word encryption. More obscure forms of leet, involving the use of symbol combinations and almost no letters or numbers, continue to be used for its original purpose of encrypted communication. It is also sometimes used as a script language. Variants of leet have been used for censorship purposes for many years; for instance "@$$" and "$#!+" are frequently seen to make a word appear censored to the untrained eye but obvious to a person familiar with leet.

Orthography

One of the hallmarks of leet is its unique approach to orthography, using substitutions of other characters, letters or otherwise, to represent a letter or letters in a word. For more casual use of leet, the primary strategy is to use homoglyphs, symbols that closely resemble (to varying degrees) the letters for which they stand. The symbol chosen is flexible—anything that the reader can make sense of is valid. However, this practice is not extensively used in regular Leet; more often it is seen in situations where the argot (i.e., "secret language") characteristics of the system are required, either to exclude newbies or outsiders in general, i.e., anything that the average reader cannot make sense of is valid; a valid reader should himself try to make sense, if deserving of the underlying message. Another use for Leet orthographic substitutions is the creation of paraphrased passwords. These nouns are often used with a form of "to be" rather than "to have," e.g., "that was pwnage" rather than "he has pwnage". Either is a more emphatic way of expressing the simpler "he pwns," but the former implies that the person is embodying the trait rather than merely possessing it.

;The -ness suffix Derivation of a noun from an adjective stem is done by attaching -ness to any adjective. This is entirely the same as the English form, except it is used much more often in Leet. Nouns such as lulzness and leetness are derivations using this suffix.

;Words ending in -ed When forming a past participle ending in -ed, the Leet user may replace the -e with an apostrophe, as was common in poetry of previous centuries, (e.g. "pwned" becomes "pwn'd"). The word ending may also be substituted by -t (e.g. pwned becomes pwnt).

;Use of the -& suffix Words ending in -and, -anned, -ant, or a similar sound can sometimes be spelled with an ampersand (&) to express the ending sound (e.g. "This is the s&box;," "I'm sorry, you've been b&", "&hill;/&farm;"). This is most commonly used with the word banned. An alternate form of "B&" is "B7", as the ampersand is typed with the "7" key in the standard US keyboard layout. It is often seen in the phrase "IBB7" (in before banned), which indicates that the poster believes that a previous poster will soon be banned from the site, channel, or board on which they are both posting.

;Use of the "-zorz" suffix Verbs that are generated on the internet (such as pwn) can be inflected by putting "zorz" on the end (generating the word pwnzorz in this example). The -zorz suffix can also be used to strengthen the meaning of the word (pwn means to defeat or to make a fool of; pwnzorz means to really beat or to make a fool of in a large way)

Grammar

can be pronounced as a single syllable, , rhyming with eat, by way of aphesis of the initial vowel of "elite". It may also be pronounced as two syllables, . Like other hacker slang, Leet enjoys a looser grammar than standard English. Leet is not solely based upon one language or character set. Greek, Russian, Chinese, and other languages have Leet forms, and Leet in one language may use characters from another where they are available. As such, while it may be referred to as a "cipher", a "dialect", or a "language", Leet does not fit squarely into any of these categories. The term leet itself is often written 31337, or 1337, and many other variations. After the meaning of these became widely familiar, 10100111001 came to be used in its place, because it is the binary form of 1337, making it more of a puzzle to interpret. An increasingly common characteristic of Leet is changing its grammatical usage to be deliberately incorrect. The widespread popularity of deliberate misspelling is similar to the cult following of the "All your base are belong to us" phrase. Indeed, the online and computer communities have been international from their inception, so spellings and phrases typical of non-native speakers are quite common.

Vocabulary

Many words originally derived from Leet slang have now become part of the modern Internet slang, such as "pwned". especially the "z" at the end of words ("skillz").

Terminology and common misspellings

Warez (nominally ) is a plural shortening of "software", typically referring to pirated software. j00 takes the place of "you",

Haxor and suxxor (suxorz)

Haxor, and derivations thereof, is Leet for "hacker", and it is one of the most commonplace examples of the use of the -xor suffix. Suxxor (pronounced suck-zor) is a derogatory term which originated in warez culture and is currently used in multi-user environments such as multiplayer video games and instant messaging; it, like haxor, is one of the early Leet words to use the -xor suffix. Suxxor is a modified version of "sucks" (the phrase "to suck"), and the meaning is the same as the English slang. Its negative definition essentially makes it the opposite of roxxor, and both can be used as a verb or a noun. The letters ck are often replaced with the Greek Χ (chi) in other words as well.

Kekeke

Koreans express the sound of derisive laughter by "keke". Other forms of laughter include "heehee", "hoho", "huhu", "haha", etc. In the written Korean language, hangul, it is written 크크크, and in Internet discussions or chatting simply ㅋ repeated several times is often used. Since early versions of WarCraft did not support hangul, Korean players would use a romanized spelling—hence, kekeke was born. It is often used in-game as an expression of exaltation or as a form of mockery. Commonly, it is associated with the Starcraft tactic of a Zerg rush, named after the unit for whom the tactic was created.

As in a common characteristic of Leet, the terms have also been adapted into noun and adjective forms, where a zero is often used to replace the letter O. It is sometimes used in legitimate communications (such as email discussion groups, Usenet, chat rooms, and internet web pages) to circumvent language and content filters, which may reject messages as offensive or spam. The word also helps prevent search engines from associating commercial sites with pornography, which might result in unwelcome traffic. Pr0n is also sometimes spelled backwards (n0rp) to further obscure the meaning to potentially uninformed readers. It can also refer to ASCII art depicting pornographic images, or to photos of the internals of consumer and industrial hardware. Prawn, a spoof of the misspelling, has started to come into use, as well; in , a pornographer films his movies on "Prawn Island". Conversely, in the RPG Kingdom of Loathing, prawn, referring to a kind of crustacean, is spelled pr0n, leading to the creation of food items such as "pr0n chow mein".

See also

ASCII art

Elite / Elitism

Emoticon

IDN homograph attack

Internet culture

Internet slang

Jejemon

Rebus

Typographical error

Verlan

Notes

References

External links

Leet Translator

Category:Internet slang Category:In-jokes Category:Obfuscation Category:Internet culture Category:Encodings Category:Social network services Category:Latin alphabet representations