I found this picture and I thought it fit perfectly into this topic of slang. For those of you who do not know what pwned is...I didn't either until I looked it up. Here is a good explanation:
PWNED: A corruption of the word "Owned." This originated in an online game called Warcraft, where a map designer misspelled "owned." When the computer beat a player, it was supposed to say, so-and-so "has been owned."Instead, it said, so-and-so "has been pwned."It basically means "to own" or to be dominated by an opponent or situation, especially by some god-like or computer-like force.
I think this is interesting because it was an accident, and now it is one of the most popular slang words going around. This is a good example of how slang is started. I also thought it was funny how I had never heard of it, yet when I was looking up slang websites it was on most of them! I guess I am out of the loop.... :(
5 comments:
Wow... what a fascinating history 'pwned' has. It's funny to me how quickly language travels when its roads are paved by groups, in this case, gamers.
That is a great example. Electronic Entertainment (video games) are fast becoming an overwhelming influence on pop culture at large. We are still in the infancy of this relatively new form of expression and art. Today's news stories about things like PWNED and w00t entering the common vernacular are tomorrow's cultural touchstones.
That's very interesting. I always suspected that "pwned" had something to do with "o" and "p" being right next to each other on the keyboard, but I didn't know it had such a rich history! I just sort of accepted it as an amusing misspell that a people did sometimes, and everybody just caught on to it.
hmm...i never new that, that's interesting. It's amazing how seemingly insignificant mistakes can bring to life new words.
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