FTL = For the Lose/Loss It stems from FTW which is For the Win. For the Win is associated with something that is good, cool, awesome. I believe it comes from the online game World of Warcraft. Now why the people in that game (I used to be one of them, hahaha) decided to use that phrase to mean something awesome rather than, using it when they are about to win a game, I have no idea. Maybe that's how it started. So natually the opposite of FTW is...yep FTL. 1337 = leet = elite When "hackers" used to type, they would use numbers and symbols in place of letters to make it harder to read for various reasons. ex. 1337 |-|4><0|2 aka "leet haxor" Good hackers would be called elite hackers. It just got shortened to leet. And there you go. Internet lingo is stupid. I try to maintain what grammar and spelling I learned from schooling. Watching English get butchered over the internet makes me wonder if the people typing in that way are really that stupid, or are just playing along or being silly.