elegant [LME] These days, someone elegant will generally be well dressed, but the basic idea behind the word is of being discerning and making careful choices. It comes from Old French élégant or Latin elegans, from eligere ‘to choose or select’, which was the origin of elect [LME], eligible [LME], and elite [L18th]. In the 1990s elite spawned leet as a general term of approval, particularly in computing circles, and also became a term for the distinctive slang and spellings used by hackers and leet people. However, leet or lite had already been in use since the 15th century for ‘chosen, selected’.