The old internet · hacker culture Cipher
Leetspeak (1337) Translator
Convert English to leetspeak (1337) and back. The classic hacker dialect of BBS boards, Counter-Strike lobbies and old-school forums.
The Story
About Leet
Leetspeak, or 1337, was born on 1980s bulletin boards, where “elite” users swapped letters for lookalike numbers, partly to dodge crude text filters and mostly to show off. By the Counter-Strike era it was the lingua franca of every server: pwned, n00b, h4x.
Krunes applies the classic substitutions (A→4, E→3, T→7…) and reverses them too, so you can decode messages from whatever forum time capsule you just dug up.
- “Pwned” reportedly comes from a Warcraft map-maker’s typo of “owned”.
- The word “leet” itself comes from “elite”, BBS status labels.
- Google has offered a leetspeak interface language for decades: “600613”.
- Heavy leet uses multi-character glyphs like |-| for H, Krunes keeps the readable classic set.
Alphabet
The Leet Key, A to Z
Hover or tap any letter to study it. This chart is the full key used by the translator above.
Keep Exploring
Related Languages
← Browse all 38 languages · Practice reading Leet in the Glyph Trainer →