Word.ws English Dictionary

own

UK/əʊn/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northumbria/aːn/

own adjective: belonging to; possessed; acquired and designated by; proper to; property of; titled to; held in one's name; under/using the name of. Often marks a possessive determiner as reflexive, referring back to the subject of the clause or sentence.

Adjective

own (not comparable)

  1. Belonging to; possessed; acquired and designated by; proper to; property of; titled to; held in one's name; under/using the name of. Often marks a possessive determiner as reflexive, referring back to the subject of the clause or sentence.
    • The fathers shall not bee put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: euery man shall be put to death for his owne sinne.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Deuteronomy 24:16
    • Prospero: Fairely ſpoke ; / Sit then, and talke with her, ſhe is thine owne ;1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
  2. Not shared.
    • When we move into the new house, the kids will each have their own bedroom.
  3. (obsolete) Peculiar, domestic.
  4. (obsolete) Not foreign.

Verb

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; to acquire a property or asset.
    • I own this car.
    Synonyms:
    to possess, acquire, have to one's name, property of, title to
  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. (informal, 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. (Internet, slang) To defeat, dominate, or be above.
  6. (slang, transitive) To illicitly obtain administrative access to a computer system, thereby having full access to all the files thereon (including executables).
    • "TH15 5Y5T3M 15 0WN3D"1996 June 21, The Happiest Dragon Alive!!, “Re: An unusual situation”, in (Usenet), retrieved 24 Sep 2016, message-ID <4qe8pc$8ti@nerd.apk.net>
    Synonyms:
    pwn, 0wn
  7. (intransitive, slang) To be very good.
  8. (intransitive) To admit, concede, grant, allow; not to deny.
    • I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me.1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
    • 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.1895, Kenneth Graham, The Golden Age, London, page 6
  9. (transitive) To acknowledge.
    • I must own that I have been at fault all this time.
    • Two of those fellows you must know and own.1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
  10. (transitive) To proudly acknowledge; to not be ashamed or embarrassed of.
    • "Well, I'm not hiding anymore! I'm owning my girly looks with cute short pink hair!"2014 April 17, Dan Shive, El Goonish Shive (webcomic), Comic for Thursday, Apr 17, 2014
  11. (transitive) To take responsibility for.
    • Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, told reporters that Democrats “own” the assassination of Mr. Kirk. When a reporter questioned her about attacks on Democrats, she cut him off. “Democrats own this,” she said. “We’re talking about Charlie Kirk right now.”2025 September 11, Luke Broadwater, Alan Feuer, quoting Nancy Mace, “As Political Violence Rises, Trump Condemns One Side”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN...
  12. (transitive) To recognise.
    • I own him as a son of my own.
  13. (transitive) To claim as one's own.
  14. (UK, dialectal, intransitive) To confess.

Noun

own (plural owns)

  1. (Internet) A crushing insult.
    • the amount of bigots that just screenshot my profile thinking it's the biggest own is insane.2023 June 10, @__Happyface, Twitter

own meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Sanskrit

own in Hindi

belonging to (determiner)
अपना apnā

own in Tamil

belonging to (determiner)
சொந்த conta

own in Urdu

belonging to (determiner)
اپنا apnā

own in Sanskrit

have rightful possession of
ईष्टे īṣṭe
More languagesFewer languages
own in Assamese
নিজৰ nizor
own in Arabic
مِلْك milk, نَفْس nafs, مَلَكَ malaka
own in Malay
sendiri
own in Indonesian
sendiri
own in Vietnamese
riêng, sở hữu

Examples of own in a sentence

  • 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.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company...
  • 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.2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 27:
  • I am sorry to own I began to worry then.1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The...
  • And they almost regretted—though none of them would have owned to such callousness—that their father was soon coming back.1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter 5, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:

All 40 example sentences with own

Synonyms of own

5 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of own

Forms of own

Adjective
alternative Scotlandain
alternative contraction (informal)'n
alternative form (obsolete)owne
Verb
third-person singular presentowns
present participleowning
past participleowned
pastowned
Noun
pluralowns

Past tense of own: owned

Origin of own

From Middle English oun, owen, from Old English āgen (“own, proper, peculiar”), originally the past participle of āgan; from Proto-West Germanic *aigan (“own”), from Proto-Germanic *aiganaz (“own”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyḱ- (“to have, possess”). Doublet of eigen-. Cognates Cognate with Scots ain, awin, awn, ayn (“own”), Saterland Frisian oain (“own”), West Frisian, Dutch, and German eigen (“own”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Swedish egen (“own”), Faroese egin (“own”), Icelandic eigin, eiginn (“own”), Norwegian Nynorsk eigen (“own”); also Ossetian исын (isyn, “to take”), Tocharian A and Tocharian B aik- (“to know, recognize”), Sanskrit ईश (īśa, “owning, possessing”). Originally past participle of the verb at hand in English owe.

A back-formation from owner. Compare Old English āgnian, Dutch eigenen, German eignen, Swedish ägna.

Words formed from own

Phrases with own

153 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with own

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about own

What does own mean?
Own means belonging to; possessed; acquired and designated by; proper to; property of; titled to; held in one's name; under/using the name of. Often marks a possessive determiner as reflexive, referring back to the subject of the clause or sentence.
What is own in Hindi?
Own in Hindi is अपना (apnā). See Own meaning in Hindi.
How do you use own in a sentence?
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.
What part of speech is own?
Own can be an adjective, a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce own?
Own is pronounced /əʊn/ (UK).

Words near own in the dictionary

  1. owly eied
  2. owly sulphur
  3. owly sulphurs
  4. owly-eyed
  5. Owmby-by-Spital
  6. own
  7. own brand
  8. own brands
  9. own goal
  10. own goals
  11. own label

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: own (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-own.ogg.

Cite this entry: “own.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/own. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.