What Does "69PWNDU" Mean? You Might Want to Ask Your Nearest Millennial

Modern internet language is a compendium of all the languages that have come before it, mixed with some modern lingo and acronyms. But before there was "Gen Z slang" and "Gen Alpha jargon," there was the language of the internet's first denizens: Millennials and Gen X.

Although it's likely their parents purchased the family's first computer, these elder internet pioneers were there when it all started.

And in the process of growing up on the internet, they created their own language. From internet slang and shorthand to acronyms that persist to this day, Millennials and Gen X changed modern language much more rapidly than it had ever been changed before.

Every now and then, a phrase from the early days of the internet finds its way back to the public consciousness, which is what happened with a Tennessee license plate. But we'll get to the plate in a minute. First, what does "69PWNDU" mean?

If you see a phrase that replaces vowels with numbers, you may be reading what's known as "l337speak." Also known as "leetspeak." It's an "early days of the internet" language that teenagers delighted in using to confuse their elders. Sometimes known as "the hacker language," l33tspeak was once considered a potentially dangerous coded language that parents of teenagers once viewed with suspicion.

The word "69PWNDU" is actually a phrase, and it borrows from several early-internet words. "69" refers to a sex position, to start with. And "PWNDU" can be written as "pwned you."

It's a video game reference that translates as "owned you," or "I won decisively."

It all started with the game Warcraft, where Urban Dictionary claims a map designer misspelled the word "owned" as "pwned." So when gamers adopted it, they would say "I pwned you" to mean "I kicked your rear end. Decisively."

But why the heck are we talking about these "ancient internet hieroglyphs"?

You can thank the Tennessee Supreme Court for that, and yes we're being serious. It all comes down to a license plate purchased by Nashville resident Leah Gilliam in 2010.

The license plate read, you guessed it, "69PWNDU." Leah had the license plate for 11 years before she received a 2021 letter from the state arguing that her plate should be revoked because of its reference to “Sexual domination," according to The Tennessean.

Leah then sued the Commissioner of the Department of Revenue and the Tennessee Attorney General in Davidson County Chancery Court for what she claimed was violating her right to free speech.

After the court considered the case, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that since license plates are government speech required and issued by government agencies, the First Amendment "does not prohibit the State from revoking Gilliam’s plate based on the content of its message" (via The Tennessean).

Leah and her lawyers vowed to take the fight to the Supreme Court.

This is not the first time a Supreme Court has weighed in on free speech as it pertains to license plates. In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that states could prohibit the issuance of license plates with the confederate flag, for the same reasons used in Leah's case.

The battle over what constitutes free speech and what doesn't is an ongoing one that won't end any time soon. But you're not alone if you find it odd that license plates are at the heart of the battle.