Leet

 ( Alphabets ) 

Once reserved for hackers, crackers, and , leet later entered the mainstream. Some consider and ASCII 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.

Leet symbols, especially the number 1337, are 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.

The choice of symbol is not fixed: anything the reader can make sense of is valid in leet-speak. Sometimes, gamers would work around a nickname being already taken (and maybe abandoned as well) by replacing a letter with a similar-looking digit.

• However, leet is also seen in situations where the argot (e.g. 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 themselves try to make sense, if deserving of the underlying message.
• Mild leet can be used to mess with frequency analysis "as is".

Another use for leet orthographic substitutions is the creation of paraphrased passwords. Limitations imposed by websites on password length (usually no more than 36) and the characters permitted (e.g. alphanumeric and symbols) require less extensive forms when used in this application.

Some examples of leet orthography include:

• B1ff.
• n00b – a term for "noob", the stereotypical newbie.
• The l33t programming language.
• "E5C4P3": stylized cover of Journey's Escape album.
• k3w1 deciphers as "kewl" (which is derived from "cool").
• The web-comics Megatokyo and Homestuck contain characters who speak variations of leet.
• The digit "5" in the stage name of musician Deadmau5.
• "DEF 4L7" plates are used by Defalt ( sic), a hacker from the Watch Dogs videogame (the first in the series). "DefAlt" nickname is a possible reference to "default settings"
• Upside-down "1337" (with a bar under "1") also reads as "LEET" (see example on the photo).
• "1 (4/\/"7 |_|/\/[)3|2574/\/[) '/0|_||2 \/\/|2171/\/9.17’5 (0/\/|=|_|51/\/9" is heavily leet-styled "I can’t understand your writing. It’s confusing".
• Sometimes, a word can be typed in leet with digits only:
• "360" codes the word "EGO" in leet.
• "2007 2008" deciphers as "QOOT QOOB" which is derived from "cute cube").
• "2083" or "12083" somewhat resembles "Robe" noun.
• "11363015" means LIEGEOIS, e.g. Liège.
• "1231474813" is an encoding of the word "RELATABLE"
• "137 17 83 137 17 60" hides the phrase "let it be, let it go"
• "4150" may stand for "ALSO"
• "33571 – 18124" translates to " Eesti – Ibiza".
• "2077" can be found in the logo of German dairy company "ZOTT" logo
• Sometimes words or phrases with 6 letters can be leet-ified into a valid Web colors:
• █ "614D05" is a valid HEX-code for a dark shade of gold color, referencing GLaDOS;
• █ "572E55" (or █ "572355") is a dark purple color, coming from the word "STRESS";
• █ "1C373A" is a dark cyan ("icy") color, derived from "ICE TEA";
• █ "C47C47" is a peach-orange color, derived from the word cat twice;
• █ "C01025" is a pink-ish shade of red, derived from the word "COLORS";
• █ "D35327" is a dark orange color, produced from "DESERT".
• █ "80771E" is a yellowish-orange color, produced from "BOTTLE".
• █ "B00B15" is a redish color, derived from "Breast".
• █ "B4DD1E" is a yellowish-green color, produced from "BADDIE".
• It is possible to spell words and names in leet-speak to create additional references.
• For example, the name "Marisa" can be spelled as /\/\AR15/\ – with a reference to the AR-15 platform.
• 834-613 means Beagle all while also referencing to the Beagle Boys and their names (e.g. 6-digit IDs) in particular.
• 2017Δ1337 is a reference to Colt Delta Elite, where "2017" stands for "Qolt" (derived from "Colt") and "1337" bears aforementioned "Elite" meaning.

However, leetspeak should not be confused with SMS language, characterized by using "4" as "for", "2" as "to", "b&" as "ban'd" (i.e. "banned"), "gr8 b8, m8, appreci8, no h8" as "great bait, mate, appreciate, no hate", and so on.

-xor suffix

The meaning of this suffix is parallel with the English -er and -or suffixes (seen in hacker and lesser) in that it derives from a verb stem. It is realized in two different forms: -xor and -zor, and , respectively. For example, the first may be seen in the word hax(x)or ( H4x0r in leet) and the second in pwnzor . Additionally, this nominalization may also be inflection with all of the suffixes of regular English verbs. The letter 'o' is often replaced with the numeral 0.

-age suffix

Derivation of a noun from a verb stem is possible by attaching -age to the base form of any verb. Attested derivations are pwnage, skillage, and speakage. However, leet provides exceptions; the word leetage is acceptable, referring to actively being leet.Blashki & Nichol, 79. 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.

-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"). Sometimes, the apostrophe is removed as well (e.g. "pwned" becomes "pwnd"). The word ending may also be substituted by -t (e.g. pwned becomes pwnt).LeBlanc, 33.

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"). It is most commonly used with the word banned. An alternative form of "B&" is "B7", as the ampersand is with the "7" key on the standard US keyboard. It is often seen in the abbreviation "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 posting.

Leet has its own colloquialisms, many of which originated as jokes based on common typing errors, habits of new computer users, or knowledge of cyberculture and history.Blashki & Nichol, 81. 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 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 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.