Owned (slang)

Owned is a slang word e.g. "You just got owned", that originated among 1990s hackers, where it referred to "rooting" or gaining administrative control over someone else's computer.

By 1997, "owned" was regularly used in website defacements, and it subsequently spread to gaming circles, where it came to mean acquisition of superiority through the downfall of another entity, be it another gaming clan, or a single user. This can be in the context of winning an online game, triumphing in forum debate, or successfully hacking. It can also serve as the signature to a rebuttal, such as "You got owned!" to announce the defeat of another user on the internet in the form of a debate or flame war, or increasingly in real world situations.

Owned has now spread beyond computer and gaming contexts and become part of standard slang, where it usually entails defeat, loss or humiliation, often in an amusing way or through the dominance of an opposing party.Two other variations of the word owned include own3d and 0wn3d, terms which incorporate elements of leetspeak.

At some point, the variant term "pwned" appeared in the same subculture; this alteration originated from typos that occurred when hasty gamers tried typing too fast on the keyboard, thus missing the "o" and typing "p" instead. Pwn has become a term in its own right but is sometimes still verbally pronounced [oʊn] in recognition of its origin.