Own
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Own or more frequently Pwn is 1337-speak for dominating another player character or mob. Very few people actually use the term own; it is (essentially) invariably purposely spelled pwn, although in speech they would probably pronounce it pown (or pone) - though the correct pronunciation would be 'poon', based on the fact there are no vowels in the word. Many players will use "pwn" or the past tense "pwned", "pwnd" or "pwnt" jokingly.
Examples:
- "I pwned that goretusk!"
- "U dueld me now I pwn you!"
Younger gamers are steadfast in their belief that the origin of this word dates back to the days of WarCraft when a map designer misspelled "Own" as "Pwn". What was originally supposed to be "player has been owned" was "player has been pwned".
Older gamers, those that were around before video games and those that grew up using BBS's for online entertainment, will argue that the origin of this word dates back several hundred years ago to the game of Chess when checkmating your opponent with a Pawn, the lowest valued chess piece, was termed Pawned and, without using l337 speak, simply typed pwn, pwnd, etc. when executing this form of checkmate.
It is, however more likely that the origin of the word is the same as that of ZOMG, in that it was actually just a typo, having had the character 'p' pressed instead of the character 'o', which is just to the left on the standard keyboard.
The end result is the same; One would rather Pwn than be Pwnd. The term grew from there and is now used throughout the online world but especially in online games.
