Owned

How to spell owned

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce owned

What does owned mean?

1. verbPast tense of 'own': had as one's legal property or possession.
2. verbPast tense of 'own': admitted or acknowledged something, often a fault or responsibility.
3. verbPast tense of 'own' in informal use: thoroughly defeated, dominated, or outclassed someone.

Owned in a sentence

• Her family owned the corner shop for three generations.

• She owned her mistake openly and apologised to the team.

• Their team completely owned the rivals in the final match.

• Before the merger he owned a small stake in the company.

• He finally owned up to breaking the window.

• She owned the debate with a single sharp reply.

Where does owned come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past form of the verb 'own', which traces back to the Old English āgnian, meaning 'to possess' or 'to make one's own'. That verb grew out of the adjective āgen, 'one's own', which itself came from āgan, an old verb meaning 'to have' or 'to possess'. The same Germanic root sits behind the words 'owe' and 'ought', which once carried the sense of having something as a duty or possession. Over the centuries the meaning narrowed from a general 'to have' toward the modern idea of legal or rightful possession, and the regular -ed ending simply marks the past tense and past participle. In the late twentieth century an informal sense emerged from gaming and internet culture, where to 'own' someone means to defeat or humiliate them decisively. The spelling keeps the silent 'w' from the original root, which is the small trap when writing it quickly.

How the word is built

• own (from Old English āgen: possessed, one's own)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)