Owner

What is an owner?

An owner is the person who, in a BDSM relationship, holds ownership over another, with the responsibility that comes with it. Facing an owner there is usually a pet. Within M/s the same position is called Master or Mistress; owner is the word people choose when the relationship is about possession and not about service.

Where the word owner comes from

From a verb that meant authority, not possession. Etymonline dates own to around 1200 and gives the meaning: “to possess, have; rule, be in command of, have authority over”. After that the verb fell out of the language. It only came back in the early seventeenth century, partly as a back-formation from the noun owner, which since the middle of the fourteenth century points to something far more legal: “one who owns, one who has legal or rightful title”. The Dutch eigen sits on the same stem, Proto-Germanic aiganaz.

Those two hundred years are exactly the difference the scene turns on. The old verb is about who is in charge. The later noun is about a title at the notary’s, and that does not exist for people anywhere in the world.

What an owner does and why people want the role

Carrying responsibility, day in and day out. An owner owns a pet in name and in practice takes on the care for it twenty-four hours a day: food, sleep, behavior, limits. Sex does not have to be part of it and plays no role in some of these relationships. Often the owner also supplies the gear from animal play, from a collar to a cage. In the scene owner goes with pet the way Master goes with slave, two pairs you had better not mix up.

For most owners the appeal is in the continuity. One relationship where it is settled who sets the frame saves an endless run of small negotiations, and on the other side the calm lies in being cared for without having to ask. Only: ownership is an agreement between two people and nothing more. There is no body that ratifies it. An owner who gives the other no way out that they alone can use is then not an owner but a risk.

Where this fits on this site

A relationship with ownership runs over months, and that is not what I offer; with me it is about an evening or a day. If within that time you do want to feel what it is like to hand over control to someone who guards the frame, the page about the BDSM date explains how that is prepared and what we agree on beforehand.

Sources

• own (v.). Online Etymology Dictionary (Etymonline), entry consulted 3 August 2026. Gives the dating of the verb own to around 1200 with the meaning “to possess, have; rule, be in command of, have authority over”, its disappearance after 1300 and its revival in the early seventeenth century as a back-formation from owner, plus the origin of the adjective from Old English agen and Proto-Germanic aiganaz, “possessed, owned”, which the Dutch eigen also goes back to.
• owner (n.). Online Etymology Dictionary (Etymonline), entry consulted 3 August 2026. Gives the dating of the noun to the middle of the fourteenth century and the meaning “one who owns, one who has legal or rightful title”.

Related terms

An owner is the owning half of a relationship in which the other has given themselves away; anyone after the heavier variant reads M/s.

• M/s. The relationship in which ownership is the starting point, with the reason a slave contract counts for nothing in law.
• Master. The title that goes with a slave instead of a pet, used more broadly than only within M/s.
• Handler. The role that leads during petplay without claiming ownership.
• Kitten play. The form in which an owner comes up most often, with a counter-role that lets itself be talked into it.
• Animal play. The umbrella that petplay, and so most ownership relationships, falls under.
• Collaring. The moment ownership takes effect, and what is spoken there.
• BDSM test. The questionnaire the Owner label comes from, and what such a result does and does not mean.
• Petplay. The branch of animal play in which an owner comes up most often, and where the keeping itself is the core.
• Slave. The role an owner most often faces, with the word’s history alongside.
• Female slave. The female counter-role, with the word formation behind it. What a pet is, is on the page about petplay.