phreak n.

hip-hop slang, "great, excellent," 1992, originating perhaps in the late 1980s and meaning at first "sexiness in a woman." The word itself is presumably a variant of fat (q.v.) in one of its slang senses, with the kind of off-beat spelling preferred in street slang (compare boyz). The spelling is attested as far back as 1678, as an erroneous form of fat (a classical over-correction; see ph).

In the modern word it is said by some to be an acronym, and supposed originals are offered: "pretty hot and tasty," or "pretty hips and thighs" among them, all unconvincing. These may have begun as improvised explanations to women who felt insulted by the word.

consonantal digraph now in English usually representing the sound of -f-, originally it was the combination used by Romans to represent Greek letter phi (cognate with Sanskrit -bh-, Germanic -b-), which at first was an aspirated "p," later probably the same sound as German -pf-. But by 2c. B.C.E. had become a simple sound made by blowing through the lips (bilabial spirant).

Roman "f," like modern English "f," was dentilabial; by c. 400, however, the sounds had become identical and in some Romanic languages (Italian, Spanish), -ph- regularly was replaced by -f-. This tendency took hold in Old French and Middle English, but with the revival of classical learning the older words subsequently were altered back to -ph- (except fancy and fantastic), and due to overcorrection in this some non-Greek words in -f- began to appear confusedly in -ph-, though these forms generally have not survived (nephew is an exception). The modern slang fad for replacing f- with ph- (as in phat) seems to date to the 1960s and phone phreak (see phreak), where it might have been suggested by the spelling of (tele)phone.

"fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by disguising oneself as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication" [Wikipedia], by 2000 (many sources cite usage from 1995 among hackers, and the thing itself was active by then); an alteration of fishing (n.); perhaps by influence of phreak and the U.S. rock band Phish, which had been performing since 1983.