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Acronyms and Initialisms

Here is a useful list of acronyms, initialisms, and abbreviations you may come across in e-mails, chat rooms, online games, instant messaging, or elsewhere on the Internet or in phone text messages.

If you often find yourself baffled by TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) and ETLAs (Extended Three Letter Acronyms) as you surf the 'Net, bookmark this page and you will always have a handy dictionary at your fingertips. The lists contain various sorts of abbreviation, including acronyms, which are words made from the ititial letters of other words, and pronounced as a word themselves, and initialisms, which are like acronyms, but pronounced by spelling out the letters individually. (This means that TLA and ETLA are actually initialisms, not acronyms.)

Common Abbreviations

In this first list, you will find the abbreviations that are most commonly encountered.

AFK Away From Keyboard

ASL? Age? Sex? Location?

B4 Before

BAK Back At Keyboard

BBL Be Back Later

BCNU Be seeing you

BRB Be Right Back

BTW By The Way

FAQs Frequently Asked Questions

IMHO In My Humble Opinion

L8R Later

LOL Laughs Out Loud

MOF? Male Or Female?

NM or N/M Never Mind (or Not Much)

NP or N/P No Problem

OMG Oh My God

ROFL or ROTFL Rolling On (The) Floor, Laughing

TTFN Ta Ta For Now

UR Your / You're

W/ With

Although all these abbreviations are given in upper case letters (as acronyms and initialisms should be, standardly), you are just as likely to enounter many of them written, in informal situations, in lower case characters.

Other Abbreviations

There are many more widely used abbreviations on the Internet. (Note that abbreviations, such as the initialism ASAP, are not included here because they are well known outside the domain of the Internet.)

AFAICT As Far As I Can Tell

AFAIK As Far As I Know

AIUI As I Understand It

BST But Seriously Though

BTDT Been There, Done That

CUL See you Later

DWISNWID Do What I Say, Not What I Do

DYJHIW Don't You Just Hate It When

ETLA Extended Three Letter Acronym

F2F Face to Face

FOAF Friend Of A Friend

FWIW For What It's Worth

FYI For Your Information

GA Go Ahead

GAL Get A Life

GIGO Garbage In, Garbage Out

IANAL I Am Not A Lawyer

IIRC If I Recall Correctly

IME In My Experience

IMNSHO In My Not-So-Humble Opinion

IMO In My Opinion

IOW In Other Words

IRL In Real Life

ISTM It Seems To Me

ITRO In The Region Of

IWBNI It Would Be Nice If

IYSWIM If You See What I Mean

JAM Just A Minute

KISS Keep It Simple, Stupid

MOTOS Member Of The Opposite Sex

NALOPKT Not A Lot Of People Know That

OIC Oh, I See

OTOH On The Other Hand

OTT Over The Top

RTFM Read The F****** Manual

RUOK Are you OK?

SITD Still In The Dark

TANSTAAFL There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

TIA Thanks In Advance

TIC Tongue In Cheek

TLA Three Letter Acronym

TNX Thanks

TPTB The Powers That Be

TTYL Talk To You Later

TVM Thanks Very Much

WIBNI Wouldn't It Be Nice If

WRT With Regard To

WTH What The Hell (similarly: WTF)

WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get

YABA Yet Another Bloody Acronym

YHM You Have Mail

Our Visitors' Suggestions

Since this page was first published on Fun-with-words.com, dozens of our visitors have e-mailed to submit abbreviations they felt should be included. This final list is a selection of those submissions. We have had to omit very many as they were deemed too rude for inclusion. (We have only included abbreviations of phrases containing rude words where they are in very common usage.)

APU As Per Usual

BBIAF Be Back In A Few

BF Boyfriend

GF Girlfriend

GFETE Grinning From Ear To Ear

GG Good Game

GL Good Luck

GTG or G2G Got To Go

HAGN Have A Good Night

HAGO Have A Good One

HF Have Fun

HTH Hope This Helps

IC I see

IMAO In My Arrogant Opinion

J/J Just Joking

J/K Just Kidding

J/P Just Playing

LMAO Laughing My A*** Off

ROTFLMAO Rolling On The Floor, Laughing My A*** Off

S Smiling

SD Sweet Dreams

TC Take Care

TMI Too Much Information

TY Thank You

YMMV Your Mileage May Vary

Have we left something out? If you think you know an acronym, initialism, or other abbreviation widely used on the Internet that ought to be included in this dictionary, please send it to us.

And if you keep encountering a baffling abbreviation that you cannot find in the list above, feel free to send it to us and we'll do our best to figure it out for you. (It may be one that we know, but have not included because it is too rude or obscure.)

More on Smileys and Internet Language

See also our Dictionary of Smileys for more on these emoticons used in chat rooms and e-mails.

You will also find fun books of smilies, as well as comprehensive guides to internet terminology, in the Internet Language section of our online language book shop.

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