own

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈəʊn/
• (US) enPR: ōn, IPA^(key): /ˈoʊn/
• (Hong Kong) IPA^(key): /ˈuŋ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊn

From Middle English ownen, from Old English āgnian (“to own”). Cognate with German eignen, Swedish ägna, Icelandic eiga. See also the related term owe.

own (third-person singular simple present owns, present participle owning, simple past and past participle owned)

1. (transitive) To have rightful possession of (property, goods or capital); to have legal title to.

   I own this car.

2. (transitive) To have recognized political sovereignty over a place, territory, as distinct from the ordinary connotation of property ownership.

   The United States owns Point Roberts by the terms of the Treaty of Oregon.

3. (transitive) To defeat or embarrass; to overwhelm.

   I will own my enemies.

   If he wins, he will own you.

4. (transitive) To virtually or figuratively enslave.
5. (online gaming, slang) To defeat, dominate, or be above, also spelled pwn.
6. (transitive, computing, slang) To illicitly obtain superuser or root access to a computer system, thereby having access to all of the user files on that system; pwn.
   • 1996 June 21, The Happiest Dragon Alive!!, “Re: An unusual situation”, in , Usenet‎, retrieved 2016-09-24, message-ID <4qe8pc$8ti@nerd.apk.net>:

     "TH15 5Y5T3M 15 0WN3D"

• (have rightful possession of): to possess
• (defeat): beat, defeat, overcome, overthrow, vanquish, have, take, best

From Middle English owen, aȝen, from Old English āgen (“own, proper, peculiar”), from Proto-Germanic *aiganaz (“own”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyḱ- (“to have, possess”). Cognate with Scots ain (“own”), Saterland Frisian oain (“own”), Dutch, German and Norwegian Nynorsk eigen (“own”), Norwegian Bokmål and Swedish egen (“own”), Icelandic eigin (“own”).

• 'n (informal contraction)

own

1. Belonging to; possessed; proper to. Often marks a possessive determiner as reflexive, referring back to the subject of the clause or sentence.

   They went that way, but we need to find our own.

   • 1610-11?, Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV, scene i:

     Fairly spoke.

     Sit then and talk with her, she is thine own.

   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 8, in The Celebrity:

     I corralled the judge, and we started off across the fields, in no very mild state of fear of that gentleman's wife, whose vigilance was seldom relaxed. And thus we came by a circuitous route to Mohair, the judge occupied by his own guilty thoughts, and I by others not less disturbing.

   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 10, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     He looked round the poor room, at the distempered walls, and the bad engravings in meretricious frames, the crinkly paper and wax flowers on the chiffonier; and he thought of a room like Father Bryan's, with panelling, with cut glass, with tulips in silver pots, such a room as he had hoped to have for his own.

   • 2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 27:

     The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about […], or offering services that let you […] "share the things you love with the world" and so on. But the real way to build a successful online business is to be better than your rivals at undermining people's control of their own attention.

2. (obsolete) Peculiar, domestic.
3. (obsolete) Not foreign.

• implying ownership, often with emphasis. In modern usage, it always follows a possessive pronoun, or a noun in the possessive case.

• come into one's own
• on one's own

From Middle English unnen (“to favour, grant”), from Old English unnan (“to grant, allow, recognise, confess”) or geunnan (“to allow, grant, bestow; to concede”), from Proto-Germanic *unnaną (“to grant, bestow”). Akin to German gönnen (from Old High German gi- + unnan), Old Norse unna (Danish unde).[1] In Gothic only the substantive 𐌰𐌽𐍃𐍄𐍃 (ansts) is attested.[2]

own (third-person singular simple present owns, present participle owning, simple past and past participle owned)

1. (transitive, obsolete) To grant; give.
2. (intransitive) To admit, concede, grant, allow, acknowledge, confess; not to deny.
   • 1895, Kenneth Graham, The Golden Age, London, page 6:

     For instance, when I flung the cat out of an upper window (though I did it from no ill-feeling, and it didn't hurt the cat), I was ready, after a moment's reflection, to own I was wrong, as a gentleman should.

   • 1902, Joseph Conrad, chapter I, in Heart of Darkness:

     I am sorry to own I began to worry then.

   • 1913, D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, chapter 5

     They learned how perfectly peaceful the home could be. And they almost regretted—though none of them would have owned to such callousness—that their father was soon coming back.

3. (transitive) To admit; concede; acknowledge.
   • 1611, Shakespeare, The Tempest, v.:

     Two of those fellows you must know and own.

   • 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 2, ch. 1, Jocelin of Brakelond

     It must be owned, the good Jocelin, spite of his beautiful childlike character, is but an altogether imperfect 'mirror' of these old-world things!

4. (transitive) To answer to.
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

     I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me.

5. (transitive) To recognise; acknowledge.

   to own one as a son

6. (transitive) To claim as one's own.
7. (intransitive, Britain dialectal) To confess.

• disown

• own up
• disown

• 1896, Universal Dictionary of the English Language [UDEL], v3 p3429:

  To possess by right; to have the right of property in; to have the legal right or rightful title to.

• 1896, ibid., UDEL
• 1896, ibid., UDEL
• 1896, ibid., UDEL
• Notes:

• NOW, NWO, now, won

own

1. aw (used to express affection)

For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:own.