owns

Owns is the third-person singular present tense of the verb own, meaning to possess, have legal title to, or exercise control over something. It is used with a direct object, as in “She owns a car,” and can describe ownership of physical items, property, or intangible assets like patents or stock. In many cases, to own implies a recognized right to use and exclude others from the item.

Grammatically, own is a transitive verb. Its principal forms are own (present), owned (past), and owning (present participle). The phrase “own up” functions as a separate phrasal verb meaning to confess or admit something, and is not interchangeable with the base sense of ownership.

Etymology traces own to Old English agan, meaning to possess or have. The noun and adjective senses of own—as in “one’s own” or “own property”—developed in Middle English and modernized into today’s usage. The modern form “owns” follows standard English subject-verb agreement, adding -s to the base verb for third-person singular subjects.

In usage, ownership conveys legal or formal rights, whereas possession can be temporary or physical. Someone may own a company yet not control every day-to-day operation, or may possess property without full ownership rights in certain legal contexts. Distinctions between ownership, possession, and tenancy are common in legal and financial language.

In contemporary slang, “to own” can mean to decisively defeat someone or to demonstrate superiority, with “owns” used similarly in third-person contexts. This informal usage is separate from the formal sense of ownership and is more common in online culture.

See also: ownership, possession, property law.