PWN (past tense: pwned, pwnd, pwn'd, pwnt)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f9/Pwned_counterstrike.png
A player is "pwned" in a game of Counter-Strike. That player is not visible due to being moved elsewhere after losing.

The verb pwn (past tense: pwned, pwnd, pwn'd, pwnt) (pronunciation is still widely debated) as used by the Internet gaming culture, means to beat or dominate an opponent (pwned can mean "to be made a fool of"). While it probably originated as a typographical error of the word own, it is now used intentionally by many members of the culture. 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", "The hunters pwnt that bear", "Liverpool opened a can of ultimate pwnage", "I got pwned on the SATs", "NancyDrew just got PWNED with the brute shot!", or "I just pwned that job interview."
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Origin

The word "pwn" is an internet variation on the word "own". There are several accepted possible origins for the word, all of which rely on a pre-existing emphasis by computer users of the word "own".

The likely beginning of the meme is from the hacker scene on EFNet IRC circa 1994. "Owned" or "Own3d" referred to getting administrative privileges on someone's computer by exploiting a security vulnerability. The use of the word 'own' in terms of victory over another predates its use in the gaming subculture. This accounts for the pre-existing proliferation of the word, which may then have been morphed into "pwn" through any of the following possible means.

* One theory is that it was first used when a map designer accidentally typed "pwn" instead of "own", in the game Starcraft (or possibly Warcraft). The game was then released with this spelling error. When a player has been beat, the message "______ has been pwned" shows up. The game producers later fixed this with patches, but it remained in the vocabulary of 1337 or leet speakers.

* Another possible origin is with the Half-Life mod Counter-Strike, and similar First Person Shooters. It is thought that the word may have been an abbreviation of the phrase "pistol own" which indicated killing another player with a pistol, a feat regarded as quite skillful.

* Some believe that the word is derived simply from a common misspelling, with no significant event proliferating its use. Instead it is assumed that it simply began to spread as a result of fast typing, the proximity of the P and O keys on the QWERTY keyboard, and the tendency of gamers and net users to create and expand ineternet memes.

* Yet another way of deriving "pwn" from "own" is by jokingly stating that P is the next letter after O, alphabetically, and in that way poses as some sort of higher level - so "pwn" is a kind of superlative "own". This is the origin of other web slang expressions, such as "raising" the slang spelling "gr8" (for great) to "gr9" because 9 is the next step up from 8.

* Another possible origin is that of being "professionally owned". to mean that you were own, and that the owner is a professional. the slang then shortened "professionally" to "p" and "owned" to "wn", resulting in "pwn".

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Pronounciation

The word "pwn" is usually only used as a web slang, and the likely pronunciation of pw is "poo", due to the welsh usage. This means that grammatical convention would dictate that pwn should actually be pronounced as "poon", although many will prefer to pronounce it as own, "puh-own", "pawn" or, most commonly, "poan", as rhymed with "moan."