Here's what I sent to Mom. I see that I didn't directly explain "r0x0r" itself, but only 133t in general. But I could guess that r0x0r is a blending of "That rocks!" with "h4x0r," which derives from "hacker." ---- Etymology of R0X0R (properly written with zeros instead of Os) It is leet-speak (1334-5p3@|<), the language of the younger generation of web users (teh interwebs). It is pronounced "ROCK-sore," and it means "That rocks! How cool! You are very smart and talented
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I think it grew out of Vaxen (many vax machines) => boxen (plural of box, e.g. Man, that's a sweet rack of Unix boxen!) + Hacker/haxor => R0x0r j00 b0x0rs! => just r0x0r, but I have no evidence for that :)
See, I learned that the "X" was just a substitute for "ck" and pronounced accordingly. Thus "H4X0R" was pronounced "hacker," not "hack-sore." Similarly "R0X0R" was "rocker."
133t being 133t, though, it might be intentionally mispronounced. Lord knows I say things like "I just FUX0R3D my subversion database" and pronounce it "fuck-sored."
Your comments support my point above: Dialects serve to draw a line around one community and distinguish it from another. You are a Python geek and a sci-fi geek, but you are not a 1337 h4x0r. I'll hazard a guess that you have never installed an operating system, much less one other than Windows. That's okay, of course, but it means that you are not part of the community that claims the 1337 dialect as its own
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Etymology of R0X0R (properly written with zeros instead of Os)
It is leet-speak (1334-5p3@|<), the language of the younger generation of web users (teh interwebs). It is pronounced "ROCK-sore," and it means "That rocks! How cool! You are very smart and talented ( ... )
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133t being 133t, though, it might be intentionally mispronounced. Lord knows I say things like "I just FUX0R3D my subversion database" and pronounce it "fuck-sored."
Does that make me more or less 133t?
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May I recommend the Leetkey firefox addon for all your text transformation needs?
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