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The word pwn, 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."
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", "pure ownage", "pistol owned", or "properly owned". These are probably backronyms.
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, or a similar one occurring in a Warcraft or Unreal Tournament game.
Main article: Leet
"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 ( IRCInternet Relay Chat (IRC is a form of instant communication over the Internet. It is mainly designed for group (one-to-many) communication in discussion forums called channels but also allows one-to-one communication. IRC was created by Jarkko Oikarinen () and other chat mediums such as AIMThe AOL Instant Messenger AIM is a free instant messaging computer program, published by AOL, which uses the OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol. The most recent software version is AIM 5. 9 released in September of 2004. AOL has describ and Yahoo Messenger.
There is no uniform way to pronounce "pwn" as it is most often encountered in text. Possible pronunciations include:
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