- I’m gonna qwn you!
qwn
verb;
To kill or destroy, especially in a video game and an intense manner. As a result of people making typos and spelling “own” as “pwn,” it became popular for people to vocalize the typo in the everyday speech. Further development led to it becoming popular to shift the first letter one more further in the alphabet to form “qwn.” This word has fairly widespread use among video game players and college students, but its predecessor forms, “pwn” and “own” appear to be more common. The word dates back at least a few years according to my research and seems to have been derived as an attempt to use the phonetic shift at the beginning to create a meaning more intense than that of own or pwn.
Etymology : speak (leet speak) term derived from the term “own” originally redefined to mean to kill or destroy. Own originally means to have possession of and comes from the Old English, āgen, meaning “one’s own.”
Source : Conversation with friends
Last modified: 10 June 2008