As more of our communication occurs on keyboards of various sizes, abbreviations and acronyms take up more of the quotidian lexicon (daily lingo). Some folks bemoan this as the demise of the English language, but that’s just a matter of perspective. To others, it shows the adaptability of the English language as we evolve to use different forms of technology to communicate — and it’s not a new practice either.
Abbreviations were used long before the internet for other forms of technologically aided communication. For example, “10-4” was coined by the Illinois State Police in 1937 to indicate “message received,” and the initialism “FYI,” meaning “for your information,” was the name of a breaking-news radio program in the 1940s. Both of these older shortcuts are still in use, but the internet age has given us plenty of new acronyms and abbreviations for a wide variety of digital and real-life scenarios.
“LOL” is the king of internet acronyms — it jumped from the screen to people saying it aloud, either spelled out “L-O-L” or as a word (pronounced “lawl”), and it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2011. It stands for “laugh out loud” and is used to communicate amusement. It was introduced in its current form as far back as 1989, when it was used in an early internet newsletter. Pre-internet, some folks would add “LOL” to correspondence to indicate “lots of love” (and it’s still used as such by less-internet-savvy folks).
This is an important one to know — it means “not safe for work.” It’s fair to assume most of us occasionally look at content during work hours that is not 100% work-related, so when sending someone a link or an image, it’s considered proper etiquette to include a NSFW tag if the recipient should tread carefully before opening it in a public or professional place — the content might be risqué, or just plain loud. The tag is also used facetiously, such as with a recipe and image of a decadently rich slice of chocolate cake that someone might declare to be so sinful, it’s “NSFW.” The initialism dates back to 2000, right around the time many workers began to be able to connect to the internet on company time.
This initialism is used as shorthand for “for the win,” which itself can be traced back to game-show hosts of the 1970s, who would use it to precede a question that might reveal a victory for the contestant. The abbreviation was adopted into internet usage by online video game players in the early 2000s. The three letters can also suggest another NSFW phrase: “eff the world.”
“OMG,” like “LOL,” is a power player of the online abbreviation lexicon, and folks use it in verbal communications as well. It stands, of course, for “oh my god” or “oh my gosh,” and it’s believed to have been first used by Lord John Fisher in a 1917 letter to Winston Churchill. He likely coined the initialism because he was familiar with using abbreviations in his naval career.
