Free Republic

By ERIC MORRISON Cryptic graffiti spray-painted next to a swastika on Juneau's lone synagogue angered and confused many late last month. Police initially labeled the mark "pp4lyf" as "gang-related graffiti," but to some Internet-savvy youth the tag seems less likely to be a sign of the infiltration of organized hatemongers in Juneau than of the proliferation of an increasingly popular type of computer slang known as "leetspeak." Leetspeak, or leet, is a computer communication style in which letters are replaced with numbers and symbols to spell or abbreviate phrases and sentences. Although leet is far from new - it is...

Security At Home > Child Safety A parent's primer to computer slang Understand how your kids communicate online to help protect them Published: February 4, 2005 Related Links • Teen online lingo • Online gaming lingo • Netiquette 101 ​ ​​​​While it's important to respect your children's privacy, understanding what your teenager's online slang means and how to decipher it is important as you help guide their online experience. While it has many nicknames, information-age slang is commonly referred to as leetspeek, or leet for short. Leet (a vernacular form of "elite") is a specific type of computer slang...