No one page can hope to give a thorough lesson in Internet Gaming Slang, abbreviations and acronyms, and though initially bewildering it has been a fun experience over the years. Especially with gaming slang added to the regular lol’s and lmao’s, it has become a truly enlightening experience. The motive must have been to create and popularize these ROFLs and WTFs for their time/letter-saving qualities, but as with all jargon, they are also useful to convey a lengthy concept in a quick word – if you can call it that. LOL. There you go.

So my first introduction was to LOL: as it turned out it was a simple laugh out loud to convey to the person I was chatting with that I was indeed chuckling away to glory. Sometimes, as I found out, a LOL expressed it better than the emoticon created in the chat box for the same purpose. As I also found out that netizens and gamers have a tendency to overstate their feelings – one of the reasons obviously being that the folks they’re communicating with are not visually with them.

And thus we have the OMG – \”Oh My Goodness!\” or \”Oh My Gosh!\” or \”Oh My God!\” for those times when you would like to express your extreme happiness, shock, alarm, or a similar emotion; like that instant when you get quads playing online poker or someone smacks a royal flush right in front of you. Or we have the STFU – \”shut the %#&@ up.\” Much like WTF, it\’s not really considered a swear word, at least not to the level it would be if you actually typed out the full words. Nice people never use this phrase fully.

Let’s be done with the rudimentary introductions. Here we go:

POS: Piece of Shit

LOL: Laugh Out Loud

LMAO: Laughing My Ass off

LMFAO: Laughing My F&%#ing Ass off  or (\”Laughing my fat ass off\”); LMTAO (\”Laughing my thin ass off\”) – well, the distinction depends on your self-image!

ROTF: Rolling on the Floor (often ROTFLMFAO)

ROFLMAO – Here, you are \”rolling on the floor laughing my ass off\”. This is when I am absolutely overcome with laughter after I’ve probably heard the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time by collapsing into helpless laughter. This happens in RL (“real life”), where I actually am laughing out loud, maybe for minutes on end. Happens. Often!

BF: Boyfriend

GF: Girlfriend

And moving on further to:

NP – “no problem”

ATM – \”at the moment\”

BRB – \”be right back\”

BTW – \”by the way\”

OTW – \”on the way\”

Other courtesies when coming or going, or in general chit chat include:

TTYL – \”talk to you later

TYT – \”take your time

NVM – \”never mind\”

TY – \”thank you\”

YW – “you’re welcome”

WB – \”welcome back\”

TYVM – \”thank you very much\”

BBS – “be back soon”

BBL – \”be back later\”

JK – “just kidding”

There are the other ones, but imagine the time and effort they save:

IMHO: In My Humble Opinion (sometimes, the H can be “honest” as well)

BBIAB: Be Back in a Bit

AFAIK: As Far As I Know

IIRC: If I Recall Correctly

IAMF – It\’s all my fault. Yes, it is. You screwed up. Admit it, apologize and move on.

The ones with a difference, referred to as borderline AOLese:

b/c: Because

k: Okay

TA: Thanks a lot

Gr8: Great

L8R: Later

ne1: Anyone

sux: sucks

rox: rocks

thx: thanks

We also have hacker slang such as, which really is not a shortened version and doesn’t really save time, but then hackers live in their own fantastic world and rarely care to bother about reality:

suxorz: sucks

fuxed: f@%&ed

Noob: newbie

Kewl: Cool

tr00: True

w00t: \”woot\”.  An all purpose happy sound effect.

j00: You

skillz: skills

roxor: rocks, as in \”that rocks!\” but even more so

ph34r: fear (also ph33r)

Take the example of the overly used PWN or PWNED – Gamer defeats gamer, types in \’I pwn you\’ rather than I OWN you. Used, misused and abused ad nauseam the world over and over again.

So when I see WOOT or GRATZ I no longer wonder what it could be or google it. I try to figure it out in my own mind! Nor do I flinch anymore when my “MBA” colleagues send in a mail saying: PFA (please find attached) the SLAs (service line agreements) and the SOPs (standard operating procedures) requested EOD (end of the day).

Online gamers and netizens have their own way of communicating invented specifically to shorten the length of communication and to get across quickly. The wonderful part is: it works and is fun, too.