"0wn3d" by Dale but he wasn't sure why

It's fair to say that last night on 18 Doughty Street the rather mischievous Iain Dale totally owned me in my bitching about this morning's Guardian front page. I shan't go into that detail needless to say his ownership was quick and classy, although I did eventually dig myself out of a hole.... well maybe.

But what was interesting was that it was a viewer - who's name escapes me - that made original of comment on MSN that Iain "so owned" me. At that moment Iain found himself owned in reverse on the matter of knowing what owned meant. Iain, this post is for you as I didn't really explain it properly last night.

The word originates from two areas, online gaming and hacking, although the two are not mutually exclusive. The former refers to simply winning or beating your opponent (and is equally applied to online debating), the latter refers to quite literally owning the machine you just hacked. In hacking the aim is to "get root" (or what Windows call "Administrator"), if you do that, you own.

Be aware though online you may see it spelt many ways. Such as, 0wn3d, 0\/\/n3d, Pwn3d or even 0wn4g3 when it becomes verbalised. If you want to know what the crazy lettering is about then I suggest reading this.