Trend Central: Slang for '09

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

Also problematic is the suggestion that it arose from "World of Warcraft smack talk" since that game came out in 2004 and 'pwn' is much older than that.


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of James Harbeck
Sent: Fri 1/23/2009 7:21 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      Re: Trend Central: Slang for '09
 
I find their definition of "pwn" as "power own" interesting. AFAIK it
comes from a typo for "own" (since p is next to o on the keyboard),
like some other favoured in-usages from the same milieu ("teh" and
using 1 for some of the exclamation marks in a series are other
examples that come to mind -- both deliberate uses of originally
common errors). I've never seen the suggestion before that the "p" is
for "power."

(I'm reminded of the assertion I read in a newspaper column once that
Generation X was so named because of all the "extreme" this and that.
Clearly Douglad Coupland was unfamiliar to the author.)

James Harbeck.

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