Leet

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An example of a Leet web browser (Text instead of GUI) in Leet language on a Leet language version of Google

For information about leets as part of watermills, see Watermill.

Leet (most commonly 1337 but often also leetspeak, l33t5p34k, 133t, or l33t) from the phonetic form of the word "elite", is a cipher, or novel form of English spelling. It is characterized by the use of non-alphabetic characters to stand for letters bearing a superficial resemblance, and by a number of spelling changes such as the substitution of "z" for final "s" and "x" for "(c)k" or "(c)ks." Leetspeak was first traditionally used on bulletin board systems and then later adopted by America Online users and other Internet communities.

However, leetspeak is not popular amongst all hackers, and nowadays is most commonly used in an ironic manner to represent immaturity. Many consider it a pointless affectation, and as it has become widely used it is less useful as a way of showing membership of an "elite" group. It is nonetheless a cultural phenomenon well known amongst hackers and many other Internet users.

Certain factions maintain that "true" leetspeak is spelled correctly, with the exceptions described above. They do not consider the use of extreme short forms (such as "b" for "be", or "u" for "you") as leetspeak; instead, they refer to it by such terms as "AOL speak". This is because they associate such habits with users who use ISPs like AOL, which is associated with "newbiness" and therefore not considered "elite". Another convention sometimes associated with leetspeak or Internet chatting is capitalizing every other letter (LiKe ThIs), sometimes called studlycaps or stickycaps. A similar habit involves capitalizing every consonant (LiKe THiS).

Overview

For those who do not normally read or write like +H1$, automatic translators facilitate ciphering and deciphering Leet.

The term Leet comes from the word elite. Leet can be either pronounced as "Leet" (monosyllabic, rhymes with "meat", IPA /liːt/) or by pronouncing the L separate from the rest of the word ("el eat" (elite)", IPA /ɛliːt/). Leetspeak is a form of written slang or street talk for the information highway. It is sometimes used to create group identity and to obscure meaning from outsiders, especially newbies (which may be written n00bs). It also establishes a hierarchy, as more complex forms of leet are increasingly unreadable to the untrained eye. Consider the phrase "PHr3Ku3N7ly H4s|{3d K0o£St330nZ!" It translates to "frequently asked questions". Note the extraneous h in front of asked and the construction "-teeonz" as meaning "-tions".). Simple forms of leetspeak have become rather mainstream, as employees use the alternative spellings to circumvent their companies' mail filters designed to censor coarse language and other objectionable content. Leet can also be used to disguise text within the object code of a program because it looks very much like binary data when viewed in a text editor.

One probable explanation of its origin is from bulletin board systems (BBSs) in the 1980s and early 1990s. It started with people trying to talk about illegal or otherwise questionable activities, such as software piracy, that some BBS operators did not want to be discussed or carried out via their systems. The operators would filter out certain words or ban people who used them. Most notably the word "hacker" was a common banned word. Rather than stop talking about these topics, some BBS users would simply use variations on the words, for example "hacker" could be replaced by "hack0r" or "h4cker". These variants could be banned too, to which the response was to change the word more and more until it was barely recognizable ("h4x0r", "|-|^><()|z"). Eventually the BBS operators realized that there was no way of banning words in a polymorphic language like Leet.

This later turned into the condition where having "elite" status on a BBS allowed a user access to file areas, games, and special chat rooms, often including archives of pirated software, pornography, and text files of dubious quality documenting topics such as how to construct explosives and manufacture illegal drugs. Some people think that leetspeak or hakspek that shortens text may have been developed to decrease bandwidth usage before the bandwidth explosion of the 1990s, but this is most likely not the case, as such methods would have had extremely minimal effect on actual bandwidth usage.

Something like Leetspeak has regained some popularity in SMS (Short Message Service) media, which often have severe length restrictions and originally required many key presses to spell out words correctly. More recently, leet has re-entered the mainstream thanks to its use on various popular websites such as blogs, webcomics and forums and its widespread use on IRC. As an example of this mainstreaming, Sears introduced the "HE4T" model of Kenmore clothes-washer and dryer, in late 2004. People who enjoy irony sometimes use leetspeak to bring attention to "secrets" they believe no one actually cares about, to joke, or emphasize a nuance. The irony is that now the major use of leetspeak on the Internet is as an in-joke between computer geeks, as genuine usage has steadily declined.

Websites exist that are written entirely in leetspeak. There are also converter programs which automatically convert ordinary English text into leet, at varying levels of complexity.

Leet is also used by hackers and authors of viruses. The widespread backdoor program Back Orifice used port number 31337 to gain access to unsecured Windows computers.

Common transliterations

(subject to a great deal of individual variation):

A	4 or /\ or @ or /-\ or ^ or ä or д or ằ or ª	G	6 or & or (_+ or ,	M	//. or ^^ or \|v\| or [V] or {V} or \|\/\| or /\/\ or (u) or []V[]	S	5 or $ or z or §	Y	Y or '/ or `/ or V/ or \-/ or j also ¥ or %
B	8 or 6 or \|3 or ß	H	# or [-] or {=} or <~> or \|-\| or ]~[ or }{ or ]-[ or н	N	// or ^/ or \|\\| or /\/ or [\] or ]\[ or <\> or {\} or []\[] or ⁿ	T	7 or + or -\|- or 1 or ']['	Z	2 or z or ~\_ or ~/_
C	[ or ¢ or < or (	I	1 or ! or \| or & or eye or 3y3 or ï or []	O	0 or () or ? or p or ö	U	(_) or \|_\| or v or ü
D	\|) or o\| or [) or I> or \|> or ₫	J	,\| or _\| or ;	P	ph or \|^ or \|* or \|o or \|^(o) or \|> or \|" or \|? or 9 or []D or \|°	V	\/ or <
E	3 or & or £ or ë or € or ê	K	X or \|< or \|{ or ]{ or }<	Q	9 or (,) or <\| or ^(o)\| or ¶	W	\/\/ or '// or \^/ or (n) or \V/ or \//
F	\|= or ph or \|#	L	1 or \| or \|_ or # or ℓ	R	\|2 or P\ or lz or [z or Я or ®	X	>< or Ж

In recent years, leet has dropped out of style in some communities. Some gamers and Internet users choose not to use it as they consider it to signify weakness and immaturity rather than coolness or of "having skills/sk1LLz". However, many words from leet are now a significant part of modern Internet culture, such as "pwned", the common leet misspellings such as "teh" (73|-|), and especially the "z" at the end of words, such as "skillz". Another prominent example of a surviving leet expression is the ever-popular "woot/w00t". Also, gamers for whom using leet speak seriously is out of style, sometimes use it in an ironic sense. "h42 h42, u ar3z s00 1337" or "ph342 m\/ 1337 sk1llz".

Another location for similar text obfuscation is in multiplayer gaming, especially involving other characters from the ASCII set. Some multiplayer games allow for users to be kicked out if they are "being lame" or generally annoying the crowd, by using a simple command like "!kick username" which works fine as long as the username constitutes letters that can be typed with a normal keyboard. To prevent some kicks, people may use names such as "E'li'†è Hàxo'r" which are more difficult to type in.

An alternate theory to this obfuscation while gaming exists, however. While it is true that the use of text obfuscation helps to prevent kicks, often these characters are used to make the player's name appear more unique. One can look at the use of different attributes, such as the ability to change the color of each character in games that support it, as evidence of this theory. This may lead to players feeling that they can "psych out" the competition, as having spent the effort to make even their name superior shows their dedication to their skills.

Examples

Words

For full definitions please see Internet slang.

pr0n, pornography
w4r3z, "warez" or illegally copied software available for download (with copy protection, if any, disabled)
h4x (also "h4xx"), "Hacks" in English, these are usually programs for games that allows a user to cheat and gain an unfair advantage.
y0, greeting, used as an alternative for Hi
sploitz, (short for exploits) a piece of computer software that takes advantage of a bug, glitch or vulnerability → exploit (computer science)
pwn, or p00n, to "own" or otherwise completely dominate. (See main article for alternative spellings of pwn.)
r00t, administrator privileges, from the "root" account on Unix-like systems
m4d sk1llz, talent of one sort or another; "m4d" itself is often used for emphasis (such as in "m4d fragging")
n00b, some consider it to be synonymous with newbie (n00b is short for n00bie which is newbie 1337ified), while others make the distinction that "n00b" is an insult applicable to anyone acting stupid and "newbie" is an affectionate term for new users. Is used on message boards and forums to reference new users who speak in IM and/or leet slang itself. (Also, newb or n3wb1e.)
w00t or the emoticon \o/, a common interjection, analogous to "woohoo!" Also used for "what". Also w00tness. Also abbrevation for We Own Other Team.
oh noes or oh n03s, common phrase for "Oh no!" This originated from the site ohnoes.org
hax0r, h4x0r, h4xx0r, "hacker", where the symbols are used to draw rough approximations to letters: >< is an "x", |2 is an "r". It is possible that the substitution of "ck" with "x" is a linguistic nod to the Greek letter chi (see TeX for the original example of this). Also, Haxor is sometimes found as "Haxxor", as symbols for "x" are often doubled.
rox0rz, "rocks"
sux0rz, "sucks", as in "s|_|x0rz my n|_|tz0rz" when one feels pity for someone else, or when angry. Also spelled "sux"
suxxor, some other person considered unfriendly; also used in friendly name calling among gamers.
ub3r, from the German word über, meaning "over", as in "Ub3r-l337". Some people say "I am uber cool" or "! @m UB3R c00l!
b4k4, from the Japanese word "baka", meaning "idiots" or "stupidity". Example: "U b4k4 n00b.
ph33r or ph34r, a respelling "leetage" of fear. Most commonly used as "ph33r m3h!"
LOL or lolz0rs, meaning laugh out loud
b7 , means "banned", comes from the pun b& (B-And), the & character being above the 7 character on most keyboards.
KOS , means killed on sight, in other words hated.

Use of x0r

Note that the construction "-xor" or any variation thereof can mean not only "-ker" but also "zor" (which is how majority of English speakers would say it). In the phrase "r0x0rz my b0x0rz", which means the object of the phrase (usually a game, program, exploit, etc.) is of high quality, the "x0rz" in "b0x0rz" and "r0x0rz" is pronounced "kszors". It is important to note that while "b0x0rz" appears to be leet for "boxers", it is actually from a common leet expression "r0x0r j00r b0x0rz", "b0x0rz" meaning "computers" (sometimes referred to as boxes, or among system administrators, boxen)or it is also known as Boxers (underwear) as if to say it makes your pants go wild. "r0x0rz" is generally pronounced as "roks-ors", which is how it is spelled; however, a very small minority pronounce it "rockers", following the usage in "hax0rz". The term "r0x0r j00r b0x0r" itself is probably a derivation from "r0x0r j00r s0x0r" ("rocks your socks"). It should be noted that although the spelling of leet is fairly standardized, pronunciation differs widely, as does the actual alphabet used. Much depends on which forum, newsgroup, or chat room the Leetspeak is being spoken in.

An increasingly common use of the "-xor" is changing its grammatical usage to be deliberately incorrect. Instead of using "Bob r0x0r", "Bob am teh r0x0r" is deliberately used to increase the level of irony and to separate it from less ironic true leetspeak. The origins of this variation are unknown.

There are many incarnations of leet, and it is continuously evolving as more people add to it, and thus, a single word can be "spelled" in many different ways. For example, "phonetic" could be |>|-|0n371><, p|-|0|\|3+1|<, |>h0|\|371<, ph0n371k.

Phonetic spellings

"d00d" for "dude"
"joo" for "you", also written as "j00" or "_|00"
"ph" for "f", as in "phear" for "fear" (as in "ph34r my l33t skillz") and vice versa, such as spelling "phonetic" as "f0|\|371("

Note that in true leet, the following are considered improper. They are seen more as IM lingo.

"kewl" or kwel or ku or ql for cool
"r" for are, u for you, c for see (giving the common "see you")
"2" for to or too, 4 for for (but note "4" can also represent an "A")
"8" for -ate, as l8r for later
"ne" for any
"u 1 2" for "you want to".

Frequent misspellings

Frequently, common typing errors are also absorbed into leet, such as:

"aer" for "are"
"yuo" for "you"
"teh" or "t3h" for "the" (also sometimes used as an intensifier: "He is teh lame"). Another form can also be "deh" (As in "| em deh ro><00rz!!11!").
"smrt" for "smart" (This may also be an intentional reference to an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer misspells smart in song whilst burning his High School Diploma: "I am so smart! I am so smart! S-M-R-T! I mean S-M-A-R-T!")
"waht" for "what"
"gaem" for "game"
"leik" or "liek" for "like", usually sarcastic—generally when making fun of a skript kiddie or AOL-er
German "ist" for "is", often used with word "death". For example, "mp3 ist death."
"pwn" or "pwned" for "own" or "owned". This originates from the 'P' key on a QWERTY keyboard being immediately beside the 'o' key and pressed by the less-than-nimble pinky (little) finger.
"flase" as opposed to the word "false"
"Evar" as opposed to the word "Ever". This is usually used in such phrases as "BEST. GAME. EVAR."
"Laymur" for "lamer", as in one that is lame.

Some of these examples, in particular 'teh' and 'pwn' are frequently used on purpose, to lighten up a mood, strengthen a point, or annoy the receiving parties.

Phrases

"WHeRE @Re J00" or "Wh3re aer j00?" for "where are you"
"wH4+'S j00R nAME" for "what is your name"
"/\/\?|<£'§ 1££+ §|<?11§ þ|/\||\| _|??", an example of especially obfuscated leet (see:obfuscated code), this translates to "Mike's leet skills own you".
"g0s\/" for gosu, meaning "pro", from Korean players of Starcraft
"skilled r0x0rt looking for a team pgm only high lvl, pv me" for "I'm a qualified player looking forward to be hired by a progaming clan in electronic sports, contact me now".
"Leet time", or 13:37
"1337teen", used commonly on forums and suchlike to denote the 1337th post, pageviews, etc. eg; "My 1337teenth hit"

Over-exclamation

Another common feature of Leet is over-exclamation, where a sentence is postfixed with many exclamation marks: pHu><x0|2z j00 L4yMUr!!!!!!!!!!

In some cases, because the exclamation symbol (!) resides on the same key as the number one ("1"), over-exclamation can be accidentally typed with extraneous digits, owing to the excitement of the typist: y0 d00d th1s 5h1zZ47 R0Xx0rzZ!!!!!11

The first known usage of the "!!111!!111!" was by The Gonif on the Adventurers' Tavern BBS around 1986. He was satirizing the growing number of "new warez kids" who would become overly excited when acquiring new software, and in their excitement could barely type properly. It was reintroduced around 1995 in the context of online multiplayer games, in particular Quake.

Additionally, the adjacent ~ (tilde) and @ keys may be used in this fashion: t3h leik this OwNz!!11!?!??!@!!????//1!!~~ Some users have adopted this and include it deliberately.

A growing phenomenon is deliberately typing the word "one": pwnz0r3d!!!!!11oneoneone, and deliberately typing the words "exclamation mark", as in the next example. In some cases, this has been purposely exaggerated for comic or ub3r-L33+ effect, for example, L0l!!!11!eleventy-one1!1!11one1!!!exclamationmark!!11oneone!1. It can also be used to poke fun at users of AOL speak, and other "lesser" cultures. Note that letter-to-number translations tend not to occur within these "oneoneone" blocks.

Another example of accidental misspelling may also be used in this manner, such as "omg!!11oneoneelven", where elven is the misspelling of eleven.

Even more satirical is the insertion of non-one numbers into a phrase as well as improper acronym usage in a humorous way, such as "OMFGWTFBBQ!!11!11FORTY-TWO!!111!!17!1NINE!1111!1!", where 42 comes in as a joke stemming from the ever-popular Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Leet as a spoken language

Not much thought is given to leet as a spoken language, for reasons relating to its origins as a sort of evolved form of Internet cipher. While Leet can be pronounced, it rarely occurs outside the mediums of multiplayer online gaming and IRC. It is not known whether this is because Leet, very uncommonly heard by the human ear outside of individual words which have made their way into the vernacular and slang of our time ("pwned", "roxxed," "haxxor", etc.), produces an unfamiliar and awkward sound for both the speaker and the listener, or whether it is because, for the same reason that abbreviations and ciphers are usually omitted from everyday speech, spoken Leet often takes more time to pronounce and articulate than the original sentence.

There may be people who speak almost entirely in the Leet language with words pronounced as they would be spelled in written Leet, but the only such individuals we know about are fictional (see "Largo", Megatokyo) in media where there is no spoken word (in this case, a comic). It is commonly said (in jest) that if leet speakers met and attempted to communicate by speech, they would have to communicate through subtitles.

Leetspeak is, however, extremely common in high school gamer groups, especially in those who frequently play LAN/online games such as Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament, Quake, and others. Often, those with a reasonable amount of playing experience in any of these games will make fun of "n00bs" by using Leet to imitate them.

Rarely, with the introduction of such applications as teamspeak and general real life meeting of familiar gamers, some have been known to pronounce the more common terms such as "pwn" (pawn, pown, poon, pween), "own", and "noob" (nub, noob, newb).

Leet in videogaming

Anarchy Online

A "Leet" is also the name of a furry, cuddly creature in the online massively multiplayer role playing game, Anarchy Online. Leets are cuddly, speak in leet speak, and, within the game's story, are considered a nuisance. The names of the various kinds of leets found in the game world play on leet, with progressively stronger leets named Leet, Eleet, Leetas, Soleet, Phear Leet and Supa Leet, in addition to special unique leets named Joo and Ownz. Their cuteness has in many ways made them a mascot for the game, with calls for plush leet dolls being common, and a special set of leet pets being the pre-order gift for Alien Invasion, Anarchy Online's third expansion.

Pocket Kingdoms

N-Gage MMORPG Pocket Kingdom: 0wn the W0rld makes heavy use of Leet and gamer slang in its NPC dialogue to comedic effect. This is partly due to the game being based upon the online community.

.hack (Dot Hack)

The anime, video game, manga and book series .hack has a character named Sora who, in the original Japanese versions of the various media, added sound effects and assorted strange phrases to his regular speech, which resulted in a problem for the translators of the fourth video game, in which he was a playable character. So, his speech was instead translated to Leet, the closest English equivalent.

Alien Hominid

The console verison of Alien Hominid uses the term "Pwned" in one of its mini-games

Tony Hawk's Underground

One of the characters on Tony Hawk's Underground says "l33t" and "r00l" and an online message says "I own3d j00." In its sequel, one of the objective in the story mode is "Berlin gets owned", which the player needs to destroy a billboard so that it reads "owned".

Star Wars: Republic Commando

One of the commandos named Scorch, when ordered to slice a terminal will sometimes say "no terminal can withstand my l33t h4x0r ski11z".

City of Heroes

Two of the Freakshow villains in the MMOG City of Heroes are named TeH OwNz0r! and TeH PwNxxOrz, respectively.

Sociological aspects of Leet

Leetspeak can be said to be an expression of some general laws of sociology as it applies to small tribes or cliques which strive to maintain a sense of elitist cultural identity and uniqueness in the midst of the 'ignorant masses' by inventing linguistic and fashion styles. Such behavior is deeply ingrained in the human psyche, perhaps to the point of being encoded in the genes. In literature, the book Lord of the Flies depicts the evolution of such behavior.

Leetspeak often represents an intermediate stage in a user's use of the Internet. First there is the "newbie" stage, where the user is ignorant about the customs and language of the Internet. Next there is the Leet stage, where the user has obtained enough information to "speak leet" to prove their superiority over "newbies" or to simply shorten typing time. Grammar (especially capitals etc) is often ignored in this stage. Many Internet users of high-school age are in the stage. The third and final stage is a more mature stage, where most words are spelt in full and grammar is used correctly. Most major websites hosted by people in this stage—highly Internet savvy people who only use leet ironically. For example, HBO and Penny Arcade.