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Leet (or "1337"), also known aseleet,leetspeak, or simplyhacker speech, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on theInternet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of theirglyphs viareflection or other resemblance. Additionally, it modifies certain words on the basis of a system ofsuffixes and alternative meanings. There are manydialects orlinguistic varieties in differentonline communities.
The term "leet" is derived from the wordelite, used as an adjective to describe skill or accomplishment, especially in the fields ofonline gaming andcomputer hacking. The leet lexicon includes spellings of the word as1337 orleet.
Leet originated withinbulletin board systems (BBS) in the 1980s,[1][2] where having "elite" status on a BBS allowed a user access to file folders, games, and special chat rooms. TheCult of the Dead Cow hacker collective has been credited with the original coining of the term, in their text-files of that era.[3] One theory is that it was developed to defeattext filters created by BBS orInternet Relay Chatsystem operators for message boards to discourage the discussion of forbidden topics, likecracking andhacking.[1]
Once reserved forhackers, crackers, andscript kiddies, leet later entered the mainstream.[1] Some consideremoticons andASCII art, like smiley faces, to be leet, while others maintain that leet consists of only symbolic word obfuscation. 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 obfuscated communication. It is also sometimes used as a scripting language. Variants of leet have been used to evade censorship for many years; for instance "@$$" (ass) and "$#!+" (shit) are frequently seen to make a word appear censored to the untrained eye but obvious to a person familiar with leet. This enables coders and programmers especially to circumvent filters and speak about topics that would usually get banned. "Hacker" would end up as "H4x0r", for example.[4]
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Leet symbols, especially the number 1337, areInternet memes that have spilled over into some culture. Signs that show the numbers "1337" are popular motifs for pictures and are shared widely across the Internet.[5]
Algospeak shares conceptual similarities with leet, albeit with its primary purpose to circumvent algorithmiccensorship online, "algospeak" deriving fromalgo ofalgorithm andspeak. These areeuphemisms that aim to evadeautomated online moderation techniques, especiallythose that are considered unfair or hinderingfree speech.[6][7][8][9][10] One prominent example is using the term "unalive" as opposed to the verb "kill" or even "suicide". Other examples include using "restarted" or "regarded" instead of "retarded" and "seggs" in place of "sex". These phrases are easily understandable to humans, providing either the same general meaning, pronunciation, or shape of the original word. It is furthermore often employed as a more contemporary alternative to leet. The approach has gained more popularity in 2023 and 2024 with pro-Palestiniansocial media users as theGaza war intensified, in order to circumvent algorithms used by platforms such asMeta andTikTok.[11][12]
One of the hallmarks of leet is its unique approach toorthography, using substitutions of other letters, or indeed of characters other than letters, to represent letters in a word.[13][14] For more casual use of leet, the primary strategy is to use quasi-homoglyphs, symbols that closely resemble (to varying degrees) the letters for which they stand.
The choice of symbol is not fixed: anything the reader can make sense of is valid in leet-speak. Sometimes,a gamer would work around a nickname being already taken (and maybe abandoned as well) by replacing a letter with a similar-looking digit.
Another use for leet orthographic substitutions is the creation of paraphrased passwords.[1] Limitations imposed by websites on password length (usually no more than 36) and the characters permitted (e.g. alphanumeric and symbols)[15] require less extensive forms when used in this application.
Some examples of leet orthography include:
However, leetspeak should not be confused withSMS-speak, characterized by using "4" as "for", "2" as "to", "b&" as "ban'd" (e.g. "banned"), "gr8 b8, m8, appreci8, no h8" as "great bait, mate, appreciate, no hate", and so on.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k7< | l | m 11 | n | o | p | q | r|2 |- 3 | s | t | u | v | w | x | y`|΄ | z |
Text rendered in leet is often characterized by distinctive, recurring forms.
Leet can be pronounced as a single syllable,/ˈliːt/, rhyming witheat, by way ofapheresis of the initial vowel of "elite". It may also be pronounced as two syllables,/ɛˈliːt/. In particular, speakers of leet are fond ofverbing nouns, turning verbs into nouns (and back again) as forms of emphasis, e.g. "Austin rocks" is weaker than "Austin roxxorz" (note spelling), which is weaker than "Au5t1N is t3h r0xx0rz" (note grammar), which is weaker than something like "0MFG D00D /\Ü571N 15 T3H l_l83Я 1337 Я0XX0ЯZ" (OMG, dude, Austin is theüber-elite rocks-er!). In essence, all of these mean "Austin rocks," not necessarily the other options. Added words and misspellings add to the speaker's enjoyment. Leet, like hacker slang, employs analogy in construction of new words. For example, ifhaxored is the past tense of the verb "to hack" (hack → haxor → haxored), thenwinzored would be easily understood to be the past tense conjugation of "to win," even if the reader had not seen that particular word before.
Leet has its own colloquialisms, many of which originated as jokes based on common typing errors, habits of new computer users, or knowledge ofcyberculture and history.[21] Leet is not solely based upon one language or character set. Greek, Russian, 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 termleet itself is often written31337, or1337, and many other variations. After the meaning of these became widely familiar,10100111001 came to be used in its place, because it is thebinary form of1337 decimal, making it more of a puzzle to interpret. An increasingly common characteristic of leet is the changing of grammatical usage so as 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.
Many words originally derived from leet have now become part of modernInternet slang, such as "pwned".[1] The original driving forces of new vocabulary in leet were common misspellings and typing errors such as "teh" (generally considered lolspeak), and intentional misspellings,[22] especially the "z" at the end of words ("skillz").[1] Another prominent example of a surviving leet expression isw00t, an exclamation of joy.[2] w00t is sometimes used as abackronym for "We owned the other team."
New words (or corruptions thereof) may arise from a need to make one's username unique. As any given Internet service reaches more people, the number of names available to a given user is drastically reduced. While many users may wish to have the username "CatLover," for example, in many cases it is only possible for one user to have the moniker. As such, degradations of the name may evolve, such as "C@7L0vr." As the leet cipher is highly dynamic, there is a wider possibility for multiple users to share the "same" name, through combinations of spelling and transliterations.
Additionally,leet—the word itself—can be found in thescreen-names andgamertags of many Internet and video games. Use of the term in such a manner announces a high level of skill, though such an announcement may be seen as baselesshubris.[23][more detail needed]
Warez (nominally/wɛərz/) is a plural shortening of "software", typically referring to cracked and redistributed software.[23]Phreaking refers to the hacking of telephone systems and other non-Internet equipment.[1]Teh originated as a typographical error of "the", and is sometimes spelledt3h.[1][24]j00 takes the place of "you",[2] originating from theaffricate sound that occurs in place of thepalatal approximant,/j/, whenyou follows a word ending in analveolarplosive consonant, such as/t/ or/d/. Also, from German, isüber, which means "over" or "above"; it usually appears as a prefix attached to adjectives, and is frequently written without theumlaut over theu.[25]
Haxor, and derivations thereof, is leet for "hacker",[26] 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 inwarez culture and is currently[when?] used in multi-user environments such as multiplayer video games andinstant messaging; it, likehaxor, 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.Suxxor can be mistaken withSuccer/Succker if used in the wrong context. Its negative definition essentially makes it the opposite ofroxxor, and both can be used as a verb or a noun. The lettersck are often replaced with the Greek Χ (chi) in other words as well.
Within leet, the termn00b (and derivations thereof) is used extensively. The term is derived fromnewbie (as in new and inexperienced, or uninformed),[22][25][27] and is used to differentiate "n00bs" from the "elite" (or even "normal") members of a group.
Owned andpwned (generally pronounced/poʊnd/POHND)[28] both refer to the domination of a player in a video game or argument (rather than just a win), or the successful hacking of a website or computer.[29][30][31][1][25][32] It is a slang term derived from the verbown, meaning to appropriate or to conquer to gain ownership. As is a common characteristic of leet, the terms have also been adapted into noun and adjective forms,[25]ownage andpwnage, which can refer to the situation ofpwning or to the superiority of its subject (e.g., "He is a very good player. He is pwnage.").
The term was created accidentally by the misspelling ofown due to the keyboard proximity of theO andP keys. It implies domination or humiliation of a rival,[33] used primarily in theInternet-basedvideo game culture to taunt an opponent who has just been soundly defeated (e.g., "You just got pwned!").[34] In 2015Scrabble addedpwn to their Official Scrabble Words list.[35]
Pr0n isslang forpornography.[1] This is a deliberately inaccurate spelling/pronunciation forporn,[27] 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 andcontent filters, which may reject messages as offensive orspam. The word also helps preventsearch engines from associating commercial sites with pornography, which might result in unwelcome traffic.[citation needed]Pr0n is also sometimes spelled backwards (n0rp) to further obscure the meaning to potentially uninformed readers. It can also refer toASCII 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; inGrand Theft Auto: Vice City, a pornographer films his movies on "Prawn Island". Conversely, in theRPGKingdom of Loathing,prawn, referring to a kind ofcrustacean, is spelledpr0n, leading to the creation of food items such as "pr0n chow mein".
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