Abreviated form of the word "elite" often used in chatrooms and message boards; though mainstream popularized by the game Quake, where the l337 routinely fragged the hell out of lamers (unLee7 web-vermin). The "language", as it were, is generally characterized by the phonetic misspelling of words and replacement of various letters with numbers and symbols.
by stryph November 28, 2003