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
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