Leet

Leet is a deformation of English spelling, characterized by its substitution of "z" for a final "s" and the use of non-alphabet characters to stand for letters. It is often used on the Internet by hackers, hacker wanna-bes and gamers.

The name "leet" is a shortened form of "elite", presumably spelt so to prevent mispronunciation since "lite" would be read as "light". The abbreviation is probably a back-formation based on the "mail" and "email". There are several explanations for the origins of this word: the computer game Elite; Bulletin board systems in the 1980s and early 1990s where having "elite" status on a BBS allowed a user access to file areas, games, and special chat rooms.

Leet is a form of written slang. It is used to create group identity, and to obscure meaning from outsiders. It also establishes a hierarchy, as more complex forms of leet are increasingly unreadable to the untrained eye. Simple forms of leet are making their way into the mainstream, as employees whose companies use email filters resort to creative spellings to prevent swearwords from being censored.

Websites exist written entirely in leet. There are also converter programs, which amusingly render ordinary english text into leet, at varying levels of complexity.

Examples:

"warez" for "wares"
"skillz" for "skills"
"l33t", "133t" or even "1337" for "leet"
"w1k1", "w1|<1" or "^/!|{!" for "wiki"
"haxor", "#4><0|2" for "hacker" -- where the symbols are used to draw rough approximations to letters: >< is an "x", |2 is an "r"

Phonetic spellings:

"joo" for "you", also written as "j00"
"kewl" for "cool"

Frequent typos are also absorbed into leet, such as:

"yuo" for "you"
"teh" for "the"

Leet also draws elements from Engrish.