Pwn
The word pwn is, as used by the Internet gaming subculture, means to beat or dominate an opponent. While it probably originated as a typing error it is now used intentionally by many members of the subculture. The term has become so ubiquitous in Internet circles that it is often used outside of gaming contexts, for example "he just got pwned in that debate" or "the hunters pwned that bear".
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2 L33t Speak 3 Pronunciation 4 Derivative words 5 See Also |
Etymology
The most widely believed theory holds that "pwn" originated from a typo in first person shooter games, the common mistake occurred from a hand position. The user, using his mouse right-handedly, would hold three of his fingers on the keys, "a", "w", and "d", along with the mouse in his right hand. When prompted to make a comment upon "fragging" his opponent, a quick motion to type the word "own" resulted in a typo. Due to the proximity of the keys on a standard qwerty keyboard the user hit the "p" instead of the "o" key, resulting in the word "pwn".
Some people believe that the word was originally a contraction of the term "power-owned".
It has been suggested that the word resulted from a rendering problem from a specific game that made the word "owned" look like the word "pwned". As a result gamers considering themselves superior in skill started using the word as an obscure reference.
Finally, one other story reports that in the game Starcraft, someone set the option so that losing players would see a special message. However, instead of typing in "YOU WERE OWNED", a typo resulted in "YOU WERE PWNED". It is said that every use of the word "pwn" therefore comes from this one hapless misspelling.
"Pwn" has become part of the sub-language of gamers called leet speak, short for elite. While mostly used by gamers, this language is also used by those who commonly partake of internet relay chat programs (irc) and other chat mediums such as AIM and Yahoo Messenger. It has been argued that "pwn" is not a true leet speak word as it doesn't follow the leet method of replacing letters with other keyboard characters, however users of leet speak overlap significantly with users of the word "pwn".
There is no uniform way to pronounce "pwn" as it is most often encountered in text. Possible pronunciations include:
L33t Speak
Main article: LeetPronunciation
Derivative words
See Also
Internet slang