Pwn'd, as discussed above, has no common etymology with "pawns" or "peopns" -- it is a broken down version of "own" which is in turn a jargon of recent coinage describing conquest or humiliation of a competitor.

Cf. "To smoke" someone, still in circulation, which (I believe) derives from truckers' CB slang. Cf. "to blow one's doors off". Or perhaps from Vietnam-era military slang, where the meaning is more literal.


A