Quote:
Originally Posted by thejeff
Actually, I'll have to retract the history slightly. Newbie and n00b probably came into online use fairly close to the same time, though newbie has offline roots, but came into much more common use on Usenet. I stand by my assumption that n00b came from newbie, not the other way around, mostly because that derivation is straightforward and I can't even imagine where n00b would have come from if not from newbie.
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Well, given the existence of offline antecedents, I will certainly agree n00b came from newbie. I am agnostic at this point as to which was used first online.
If not for the offline sources for newbie (which I hadn't been familiar with), I could imagine n00b being an original construction in 1337 for 'new person'. I mean, its not like original 1337 constructions are unknown ('boxen').
But that n00b is obviously from newbie doesn't mean its online presence didn't originate with the 1337 spelling, since it seems to formerly have been restricted to military jargon (and not even popularized military jargon like asap, or at least I would have thought I'd have encountered it in that case). Its not like the programming community (from which the 1337 community developed) didn't have a history of appropriating military slang (see fubar -> foobar).