Sociolinguistics lesson of the day

[spyderella]

I just explained the etymology of "r0x0r" to my mom.

Tee hee.

Comments

[mmaresca]

Could you explain it to me, also? Because I never understood that one.

[spyderella]

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

[griffjon]

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 :)

[the_macnab]

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."

Does that make me more or less 133t?

[griffjon]

That comes from spending too much time with LaTeX

I'm pretty sure it's intentionally mispronounced. L33t is trying to be a sp0ken language; i.e. http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=9

[spyderella]

Ha ha, I'll pass that on to Mom as illustration. Wasn't there a bit like that in Airplane, but with Jive?