Comments | spyderella: Sociolinguistics lesson of the day

spyderella

Sociolinguistics lesson of the day

Apr 16, 2007 15:39

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

Tee hee.

Comments 10

mmaresca April 16 2007, 23:59:38 UTC

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

spyderella April 17 2007, 14:49:38 UTC

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."
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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 ( ... )

griffjon April 17 2007, 16:52:27 UTC

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 April 18 2007, 01:36:45 UTC

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?

Thread 6

unrealfred April 17 2007, 00:21:04 UTC

Will my geek cred be revoked if I say I've always found leet, overall, to be sort of...well, dumb?

griffjon April 17 2007, 00:45:40 UTC

Too the contrary, I think it goes up as long as you can speak it, but don't actually like it.

May I recommend the Leetkey firefox addon for all your text transformation needs?

unrealfred April 17 2007, 00:58:20 UTC

Okay, no...in all honesty I can't speak it. So perhaps I haven't earned my cool and aloof disdain for it.

spyderella April 17 2007, 16:47:39 UTC

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 ( ... )