Etymology of Pwn

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Max calling from Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Max!

Hiya, Max, what’s going on?

How are you all today?

Doing fine.

Super.

Cool.

I am calling to ask you guys about a word that’s thrown around a lot in computer nerd gaming circles.

The word is spelled P-W-N.

And I now pronounce the word pwn.

Well, it sounds like there’s a story here.

You used to pronounce it a different way?

Yes, I did.

I first heard this word either probably when I was a senior in high school or a freshman in college.

I’m now a senior in college, so I’ve been using the word maybe four or five years now.

And when I first heard it, my friends pronounced it poon, as if just like it looks, just poon, with no vowel.

And then when I got to college, I started dating a girl that played the game Counter-Strike,

And she corrected me and said, no, no, pwn.

-huh.

Oh, was that an embarrassing moment?

And the word means to completely and fully dominate someone.

Right, to own somebody.

Right, to own them, exactly.

And it’s just, you know, my understanding has always been that it’s just a spin from the word own.

But I would like to know what the actual, in fact, true origin of this word is,

Because I’ve heard a couple of stories, but I don’t know the actual origin of how pwn came around.

One of them that you probably heard, which is the correct one,

Is that it comes from a common and repeated mistyping of the word own, O-W-N, right?

Correct, yes.

That is the correct story. Anything else that you’ve heard isn’t true.

So it’s not from the game Counter-Strike or any other particular game?

I’ve run into this numerous times with these different gaming communities,

And they all believe that their culture is so rich and fertile

That they must be the source of all this lingo.

And yet you’ll find again and again that some of these words,

Including Pwn, existed years, even decades,

Before these games were even invented,

Or the companies that coded them were even founded.

Really?

Yes, you’ll often find that as the case.

And I’m talking in general here about this kind of computer language.

As far as I know, came about in the last 10 years or so.

It could have come from Counter-Strike,

But I don’t think that there’s any evidence supporting that.

So, Matt, for those of us who aren’t in college or aren’t gamers,

How would you use it in a sentence?

Oh, see, I mean, it comes up quite frequently in my circle of friends.

You know, say somebody says something stupid

And somebody else calls them out on it, then they just got pwned.

Or if it’s something, like, really huge,

Like you just gave a presentation in class, I guess,

And were completely wrong about something the entire way through it,

And somebody calls you out on it, that might be epic pwnage.

Epic takes it to the next level of pwnage.

So somebody would say to you, you’ve been pwned, or what would they say?

Yeah, you got pwned, you got epically pwned.

You got epically pwned.

I knew that there were multiple pronunciations for it,

But pwn is the one that I’ve heard most often too.

But to me, Max, to me, the most interesting part of this is own, the original slang that it comes from, where you could use own to mean I own you.

And that’s actually the language they’ll use, I own you, meaning I control you.

And that we do know comes from hacker subculture, and it comes from getting root on somebody’s box.

And I know that sounds naughty, but it’s not.

Wait a minute.

It means getting administrative access to somebody else’s computer illicitly or illegally

So that you can do whatever you want over the network or over the Internet to their machine.

That is fascinating.

You own that machine, meaning it is literally within your control, and that is the origin of own.

So Pwn, P-W-N, the typo for own, is actually only the latest iteration of that particular kind of slang chain.

That is really cool.

Well, Matt, thanks for calling.

Thank you very much, guys.

All right.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Interesting question.

Bye-bye.

Grant, you pwned that question.

You totally pwned that question.

I pwned you.

Now, Grant, this brings up an interesting question for me.

Are there, and I bet we could hear from listeners about this,

Are there words that you intentionally,

Remember when we talked about intentionally mispronouncing words,

Are there words that you intentionally misspell in email because I do that?

Oh, yeah, you do that all the time.

No, those are accidents when I’m writing you.

No, no, you misspell cool on purpose.

Oh, I misspelled cool, K-E-W-L, just because it has a different sound, Q.

Well, I actually think it more accurately reflects one of the California pronunciations of the word, cool.

Exactly, Q.

And I know friends that misspelled dude, D-U-D-E, to be a lot, D-O-O-D, because people in the West tend to say dude.

I’m exaggerating here, but it’s more like dude rather than dude.

Oh, really?

There’s a different vowel sound there.

So sometimes people do that to reflect the way they actually say it.

Sometimes they do it to reflect the joking nature.

It’s a tip-off, really, isn’t it, that you’re not being altogether serious and the thing is informal?

Exactly.

I used to have a cat named Typo, and he—

Because he would dance on your keyboard.

He did the first day I got him.

He typed 66666.

But I misspelled his name once in an email as Tyop, and I just thought that was so perfect.

So anytime I email somebody about Typo, I would write Tyop.

And I’m just betting that a lot of people out there do that same kind of thing.

I’d love to hear about it.

You can call us at 1-877-929-9673 or send an email.

That would probably be better if you’re going to send us a typo.

Two words@waywordradio.org.