I got pwn3d! Leetspeek explained

So I was surfing around the web tonight as I generally do most Sunday nights and came across some web speak I didn't recognize. "Pwn3d" What!?

After some quick searching using my lightening speed, journalistic skills (wikipedia...yea, I know), I found out it's a term of Leetspeak. Also known as leet, 1337, l33t, or Eleet, it could have developed as encrypted communication for hackers, but is now commonly used by gamers.

Now I realize I'm a n00b (newbie for all you non-leetspeak people like me), but I've heard of and used the more common terms like lol, brb, gtg, and ttyl.

Apparently, a lot of the words come from create misspellings.

Now that I know that pwn3d (owned) means to dominate, like as in domination of a player rather than just winning, I can leetspeak with the best of them. (Yea, probably not.)