English acronyms in text messages

When speaking and chatting in English it is quite usual these days to use contractions and abbreviations. Some of them are used on a daily basis but others are less ordinary and non-english speakers may find it difficult to understand the meaning behind them.

Every day on social media millions of people use such terms as “lol”, “idk”, “jk” but what do they actually mean and how have they become so popular among the youth? The need to shorten words originated when, over 25 years ago, texting over the phone became available. Initially in fact there was a 160 characters limit to each text message and that determined the importance of every single digit. Since then thousands of contractions have been invented and most of them are still in use.

But let’s take a closer look at some of the best-known abbreviations you can find:

BRB → “Be right back”

BTW → “By the way”

IDK → “I don’t know”

ILY → “I love you”

IYKYK → “If you know, you know”

IMHO → “In my humble opinion”

JK →  “Just kidding”

LOL → “Laughing out loud”

NP → “No problem”

NVM → “Nevermind”

POV → “Point of view”

XOXO → “Hugs and kisses”

THX → “Thanks”

WBU → “What about you?”

YOLO → “You only live once”

You can also notice acronyms that contai  numbers, the number in itself has nothing to do with the meaning, the one detail that really matters is its  pronunciation, here’s some examples:

2M2H → “Too much to handle”
2NITE → “Tonight”

4U → “For you”

These are just a few of the hundred acronyms you can encounter, in any case if you come across one you’re unfamiliar with you can easily search it up on www.abbreviations.com, this website aims to gather up all kinds of abbreviations. It will give you more than one interpretation so you’ll be able to make sure that the meaning is the correct one.

I hope this article will come in handy and I hope it has helped you to clear some things up and now that you are aware of it, make  sure not to misinterpret a message anymore! 

Martina Carulli