- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
0wned" — completely dominated (in a game); hacked into (of a computer), in the past tense, this is "0wnz0r3d". This word may also be used as a non-leet, conversational slang term. This term is sometimes spelled pwn or pwnz0r3d, and the origin of this variation is said to have derived from a typo (although this explanation is probably apocryphal): a user-created Warcraft level included a message sent to all players in the event of a player's defeat: (player name) has been owned. However, because P and O are side-by-side in the QWERTY layout, the message is said to have been (player name) has been pwned, and when the level was released, pwned entered the l33tsp33k vocabulary. Another explanation states that "pwned" arose from "Pistol Owned" or "Pistol Ownage" in the popular online game "Half-Life Counter-Strike", when a player was beaten by a lightly armed foe, and for the sake of brevity, was shortened to simply pwned.