How Do You Pronounce “pwn”?
September 3rd, 2007 by Laura Moncur in Quotations
The quote is “I pwn noobs.” It means “I own newbies.” Which means “I beat people who are inexperienced.” It usually means that you hunt down people who are inexperienced at video games and beat them, but it can also be used in a competitive sense when debating with new people in forums or even beating people down the uninitiated with other accomplishments.
Not much of a brag, really, but it’s everywhere in the leetspeak world. The question, however, is how do you pronounce “pwn”?
How do I pronounce it? I made the geek table laugh when I pronounced it “pawn.” I knew what the word meant and I knew that it was officially a typo of “own”, but it seemed so much more pronounceable as “pawn.” Geek table smackdown ensued.
In the end, it is insanely difficult to pronounce much of the leetspeak that is out there. We are quickly learning that written language can be just as fluid as spoken language. Making sense of both is a full time job for linguists the world over.