Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet, leetspeak, or simply hacker speech, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. Additionally, it modifies certain words on the basis of a system of suffixes and alternative meanings. There are many dialects or linguistic varieties in different online communities.
The term "leet" is derived from the word elite, used as an adjective to describe skill or accomplishment, especially in the fields of online gaming and computer hacking. The leet lexicon includes spellings of the word as 1337 or leet.
History Leet originated within bulletin board systems (BBS) in the 1980s,Mitchell.An Explanation of l33t Speak. where having "elite" status on a BBS allowed a user access to file folders, games, and special chat rooms. The Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective has been credited with the original coining of the term, in their text-files of that era. 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.
Once reserved for hackers, crackers, and script kiddies, leet later entered the mainstream. Some consider emoticons 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 Internet 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.
Algospeak
Algospeak (a portmanteau of algorithm and speak) shares conceptual similarities with leet, particularly in their primary purpose of circumventing algorithmic censorship online. These are euphemisms that aim to evade automated online moderation techniques, especially those that are considered unfair or hindering free speech. Prominent examples include use of the term "unalive" as a softened version of "kill" or "suicide", and "seggs" in place of "sex". These phrases are readily understood as euphemisms, providing either the same general meaning, pronunciation, or shape of the original word. Algospeak is employed as a contemporary alternative to leet. The approach has gained more popularity in 2023 and 2024 with pro-Palestinian social media users as the Gaza war intensified, in order to circumvent algorithms used by platforms such as Meta and TikTok.
Orthography One of the hallmarks of leet is its unique approach to orthography, using substitutions of other letters, or indeed of characters other than letters, to represent letters in a word.Sterling, 70.Blashki & Nichol, 80. 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.
However, leet is also seen in situations where the argot (i.e., secret language) characteristics of the system are required, either to exclude newbies or outsiders in general, meaning that 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 – "BIFF", a stereotypical newcoming user to Usenet. n00b or n008 – 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; "1057" is a way to spell "lost"; "2007 2008" deciphers as "QOOT QOOB" which is derived from "cute cube"; "2013" or "12013" somewhat resembles "ROLE" noun; "2077" can be found in the logo of German dairy company Zott. "11363015" reads as LIEGEOIS, e.g. "from Liège"; "2341" is a trick to spell leet variant of "REAL" word by putting items numbered from 1 to 4 in an alternative order. "4150" may stand for "ALSO"; "137 17 83 137 17 60" conceals the phrase "let it be, let it go"; "231474813" is an encoding of the word "RELATABLE"; "33571 – 18124" translates to "Eesti – Ibiza"; "54807463" holds semblance to "SABOTAGE"; "45724" may emerge as a synonym for "ASTRA" "411 23537" allows to obfuscate "ALL RESET". Sometimes words or phrases with 6 letters can be leet-ified into a valid hexadecimal color code: █ "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 "BOOBIE"; █ "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 BEA-GLE 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-speak, 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.
Table of leet-speak substitutes for normal letters ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ a4/\@^(LДΛ bI3813|3ß!3(3/3)3|-]j3฿ c[¢<(©ㄈ d)|)(|[)I>|>?T)I7cl|}|]l)I)Đ e3ヨ&£€[-|=- f|=ƒ|#ph/=v g6&(_+9C-gee(?,[,{,<-(. h#/-/\-\[-]]-[)-((-):-:|~||-|]~[}{!-!1-1\-/I+I|ー|ㅐ i1|][!eye3y3江エ j,_|_|._|._]_],_]]_| k>||<1<|c|(7< l172£|_ㄥ| m/\/\/V\[V]|\/|ΛΛ^^{V}(v)(V)|\|\]\/[nn11111ᱬ|V|/|/|៣ n^/|\|/\/[\]<\>{\}/V^ทИㄇ11 o0()oh[]p<>Øㄖ p|*|o|º?|^|>|"9[]D|°|7|0⁋₽ㄗ q(_,)()_20_<|&9¶⁋℗°|0| rI29|`|~|?/2|^lzl27212®[zЯ.-|2|-34 s5$z§ehses2ㄎខ t7+-|-']['†«|»~|~ㄒ u(_)|_|vL|บㄩ v\/|/\| w\/\/|/\|vv\N'//\\'\^/\/\/(n)\V/\X/\|/\_|_/\_:_/uuVV|Λ|2u\\//\\//พฟผฬយ₩ᱦω/>2v x><}{ecks×?}{)(][ㄨχ yj`/\|/¥\//ㄚ`|΄ z27_-/_%>_s~/_-\_-|_ζ
Morphology
Text rendered in leet is often characterized by distinctive, recurring forms. -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 agent nouns 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 inflected 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.
Grammar
Leet can be pronounced as a single syllable, , rhyming with eat, by way of apheresis of the initial vowel of "elite". It may also be pronounced as two syllables, . In particular, speakers of leet are fond of verbing 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 the über-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, if haxored is the past tense of the verb "to hack" (hack → haxor → haxored), then winzored would be easily understood to be the past tense conjugation of "to win," even if the reader had not seen that particular word before.