LOL, or lol, is an initialism for laughing out loud
and a popular element of
Internet slang
Internet slang (also called Internet shorthand, cyber-slang, netspeak, digispeak or chatspeak) is a non-standard or unofficial form of language used by people on the Internet to communicate to one another. An example of Internet slang is "LOL" m ...
. It was first used almost exclusively on
Usenet, but has since become widespread in other forms of
computer-mediated communication
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is defined as any human communication that occurs through the use of two or more electronic devices. While the term has traditionally referred to those communications that occur via computer-mediated forma ...
and even
face-to-face communication. It is one of many
initialism
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
s for expressing bodily reactions, in particular
laughter, as text, including initialisms for more emphatic expressions of laughter such as LMAO
[ ("laughing my ass off") and ROFL][ or ROTFL][ ("rolling on the floor laughing"). Other unrelated expansions include the now mostly ]obsolete
Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer maintained or required even though it may still be in good working order. It usually happens when something that is more efficient or less risky r ...
"lots of luck" or "lots of love" used in letter-writing.[
The list of ]acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
s "grows by the month" (said Peter Hershock in 2003),[ and they are collected along with emoticons and smileys into folk dictionaries that are circulated informally amongst users of Usenet, ]IRC
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat a ...
, and other forms of (textual) computer-mediated communication.[ These initialisms are controversial, and several authors][ recommend against their use, either in general or in specific contexts such as business communications.
The '' Oxford English Dictionary'' first listed LOL in March 2011.]
Origins
In the 1980s, Wayne Pearson is reportedly the first person to have used LOL while responding to a friend's joke in the pre-Internet digital chat room called Viewline. Instead of writing "hahaha," as he had done before when he found something funny, Pearson unknowingly made history by typing "LOL."
Analysis
Silvio Laccetti (professor of humanities at Stevens Institute of Technology) and Scott Molski, in their essay entitled ''The Lost Art of Writing'', are critical of the terms, predicting reduced chances of employment for students who use such slang, stating that, "Unfortunately for these students, their bosses will not be 'lol' when they read a report that lacks proper punctuation and grammar, has numerous misspellings, various made-up words, and silly acronyms."[ Fondiller and Nerone in their style manual assert that "professional or business communication should never be careless or poorly constructed" whether one is writing an electronic mail message or an article for publication, and warn against the use of smileys and abbreviations, stating that they are "no more than e-mail slang and have no place in business communication".][
Linguist John McWhorter stated, "Lol is being used in a particular way. It's a marker of empathy. It's a marker of accommodation. We linguists call things like that pragmatic particles…" Pragmatic particles are the words and phrases utilized to alleviate the awkward areas in casual conversation, such as ''oh'' in "Oh, I don’t know" and ''uh'' when someone is thinking of something to say. McWhorter stated that ''lol'' is utilized less as a reaction to something that is hilarious, but rather as a way to lighten the conversation.
Frank Yunker and Stephen Barry, in a study of online courses and how they can be improved through ]podcast
A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...
ing, have found that these slang terms, and emoticons as well, are "often misunderstood" by students and are "difficult to decipher" unless their meanings are explained in advance. They single out the example of "ROFL" as not obviously being the abbreviation of "rolling on ''the'' floor laughing" (emphasis added).[ Matt Haig singles out LOL as one of the three most popular initialisms in Internet slang, alongside BFN ("bye for now") and IMHO ("in my honest/humble opinion"). He describes the various initialisms of Internet slang as convenient, but warns that "as ever more obscure acronyms emerge they can also be rather confusing".][ Hossein Bidgoli likewise states that these initialisms "save keystrokes for the sender but ..might make comprehension of the message more difficult for the receiver" and that " ang may hold different meanings and lead to misunderstandings especially in international settings"; he advises that they be used "only when you are sure that the other person knows the meaning".][
Tim Shortis observes that ROFL is a means of "annotating text with stage directions".][ Peter Hershock, in discussing these terms in the context of performative utterances, points out the difference between ''telling'' someone that one is laughing out loud and actually laughing out loud: "The latter response is a straightforward action. The former is a self-reflexive representation of an action: I not only do something but also show you that I am doing it. Or indeed, I may not actually laugh out loud but may use the locution 'LOL' to communicate my appreciation of your attempt at humor."][
David Crystal notes that use of LOL is not necessarily genuine, just as the use of smiley faces or grins is not necessarily genuine, posing the rhetorical question "How many people are actually 'laughing out loud' when they send LOL?".][ Louis Franzini concurs, stating that there is as yet no research that has determined the percentage of people who are actually laughing out loud when they write LOL.][
Victoria Clarke, in her analysis of ]telnet
Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet control ...
talkers, states that capitalization is important when people write LOL, and that "a user who types ''LOL'' may well be laughing louder than one who types ''lol''", and opines that "these standard expressions of laughter are losing force through overuse".[ Michael Egan describes LOL, ROFL, and other initialisms as helpful so long as they are not overused. He recommends against their use in business correspondence because the recipient may not be aware of their meanings, and because in general neither they nor emoticons are in his view appropriate in such correspondence.][ June Hines Moore shares that view.][ So, too, does Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts, who gives the same advice of not using them in business correspondence, "or you won't be LOL".]
Acceptance
On March 24, 2011, LOL, along with other acronyms
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
, was formally recognized in an update of the '' Oxford English Dictionary''. In their research, it was determined that the earliest recorded use of LOL as an initialism was for "little old lady" in the 1960s. They also discovered that the oldest written record of the use of LOL in the contemporary meaning of "Laughing Out Loud" was from a message typed by Wayne Pearson in the 1980s, from the archives of Usenet.
Gabriella Coleman references "lulz" extensively in her anthropological studies of Anonymous
Anonymous may refer to:
* Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown
** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author
* Anony ...
.
A 2003 study of college students by Naomi Baron found that the use of these initialisms in computer-mediated communication
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is defined as any human communication that occurs through the use of two or more electronic devices. While the term has traditionally referred to those communications that occur via computer-mediated forma ...
(CMC), specifically in instant messaging, was actually ''lower'' than she had expected. The students "used few abbreviations, acronyms, and emoticons". Out of 2,185 transmissions, there were 90 initialisms in total;[ 76 were occurrences of ''LOL''.][
''LOL'', ''ROFL'', and other initialisms have crossed from computer-mediated communication to face-to-face communication. David Crystal—likening the introduction of ''LOL'', ''ROFL'', and others into spoken language in magnitude to the revolution of ]Johannes Gutenberg
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (; – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable-type printing press. Though not the first of its kind, earlier designs ...
's invention of movable type in the 15th century—states that this is "a brand new variety of language evolving", invented by young people within five years, that "extend the range of the language, the expressiveness ndthe richness of the language".[ However ]Geoffrey K. Pullum
Geoffrey Keith Pullum (; born 8 March 1945) is a British and American linguist specialising in the study of English. He is Professor Emeritus of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.
Pullum is a co-author of ''The Cambridge Gram ...
argues that even if interjections such as ''LOL'' and ''ROFL'' were to become very common in spoken English, their "total effect on language" would be "utterly trivial".[
]
Variations on the theme
Variants
* lul
Lul is a Shilluk village located on the western bank of the Nile river, approximately one and a half hours by boat north from the city of Malakal, in Upper Nile province in South Sudan. The Catholic Church established one of its first mission st ...
: phonetic spelling of LOL. "LUL" is also commonly used in the gaming community, due to it being an emote on Twitch
Twitch may refer to:
Biology
* Muscle contraction
** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation
** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction
** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle co ...
, which depicts game critic TotalBiscuit laughing.
* lolz
LOL, or lol, is an initialism for laughing out loud and a popular element of Internet slang. It was first used almost exclusively on Usenet, but has since become widespread in other forms of computer-mediated communication and even Face-to-f ...
: Occasionally used in place of LOL.
* lulz: Often used to denote laughter at someone who is the victim of a prank, or a reason for performing an action. Its use originated with Internet trolls. According to a '' New York Times'' article about Internet trolling, "''lulz'' means the joy of disrupting another's emotional equilibrium."[ Can be used as a noun – e.g. "do it for the lulz.", shortened into "ftlulz" (to distinguish it from "ftl" – "for the loss"). See also LulzSec.
* LOLOLOL...: For added emphasis, LOL can be appended with any number of additional iterations of "OL". In cases such as these, the abbreviation is not to be read literally (i.e., "Laughing out loud out loud out loud out loud"), but is meant to suggest several LOLs in a row.
* OMEGALUL and LULW: variants of "LUL" used as a ]Twitch emote
Twitch is an American video live streaming service that focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of esports competitions, in addition to offering music broadcasts, creative content, and " in real life" streams. Twitch is opera ...
.
* trolololol or trollololol: A blend of troll and LOL iterated. Indicates that the prank or joke was made by internet trolls, or the user thinks the prank or joke qualifies as internet trolling. See also Mr. Trololo.
Derivations
* (to) LOL: Used as a verb ("to laugh out loud") and is meant to be conjugated in the appropriate tense. When the past tense is meant, it is written as "LOL(e)d" or "LOL'd".
* lolwut (sometimes "lulwut"): lol + wut, used to indicate bemused laughter, or confusion.
* lawl, lawlz, or lal: Pseudo-pronunciation of LOL. Saying "lawl" is sometimes meant in mockery of those who use the term LOL, and is not meant to express laughter.
* Lel or LEL is a "playful or ironic" variation of LOL. It is sometimes thought to be an initialism, standing for "laughing extremely loud" or "laughing extra loud", but this has been disputed.
* lolcat
A lolcat (pronounced ), or LOLcat, is an image macro of one or more cats. Lolcat images' idiosyncratic and intentionally grammatically incorrect text is known as lolspeak.
Lolcat is a compound word of the acronymic abbreviation LOL (laugh o ...
, an image macro
An image macro is a piece of digital media featuring a picture, or artwork, with some form of text superimposed. The text frequently appears at the top and bottom of the image. Image macros are one of the most common forms of internet memes, and ...
of a cat
Related
* *G* or *g*: For "grins". Like "lulz" it is used in the initialism "J4G" ("just for grins").
* kek: A term for laughter that originated in online games, possibly either ''World of Warcraft
''World of Warcraft'' (''WoW'') is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the ''Warcraft'' fantasy universe, ''World of Warcraft'' takes place within the world of Azeroth ...
'' or '' StarCraft'', the latter in which Korean players would type "kekeke" as onomatopoeia for laughter. It later became associated with alt-right
The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a far-right, white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s before increasing in popularity during the mid-20 ...
politics, in the form of a parody religion surrounding the character Pepe the Frog
Pepe the Frog () is an Internet meme consisting of a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body. Pepe originated in a 2005 comic by Matt Furie called ''Boy's Club''. It became an Internet meme when its popularity steadily grew across Myspa ...
by analogy with the frog-headed ancient Egyptian god Kek
, known as KEK, is a Japanese organization whose purpose is to operate the largest particle physics laboratory in Japan, situated in Tsukuba, Ibaraki prefecture. It was established in 1997. The term "KEK" is also used to refer to the laboratory ...
.
* LMAO: For "laughing my ass off".[ Variants: LMBO ("Laughing my butt off"), ]LMFAO
LMFAO (an initialism for Laughing My Freaking Ass Off or Laughing My Fucking Ass Off) are an American electronic dance music duo consisting of Redfoo and Sky Blu. Redfoo is the youngest son of Motown Records founder Berry Gordy and Nancy Le ...
("Laughing my fucking ass off").
* lqtm: For "Laughing quietly to myself".
* ROFL
LOL, or lol, is an initialism for laughing out loud and a popular element of Internet slang. It was first used almost exclusively on Usenet, but has since become widespread in other forms of computer-mediated communication and even face-to- ...
: For "rolling on the floor laughing". It is often combined with LMAO for added emphasis as ROFLMAO ("Rolling on the floor laughing my ass off") or ROFLMFAO (Rolling on the floor laughing my fucking ass off).
* roflcopter: A portmanteau of ROFL and helicopter. A popular glitch
A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system, such as a transient fault that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among ...
in the Microsoft Sam
The Microsoft text-to-speech voices are speech synthesizers provided for use with applications that use the Microsoft Speech API (SAPI) or the Microsoft Speech Server Platform. There are client, server, and mobile versions of Microsoft text-to-s ...
text-to-speech engine enables the voice to make a sound akin to the rotation of rotor blades when 'SOI' is entered, and the phrase 'My ROFLcopter goes soi soi soi..." is often associated with the term as a result.
* PMSL: For "pissing myself laughing".
Commonly used equivalents in other languages
In some languages with a non-Latin script, the abbreviation LOL itself is also often transliterated. See for example Arabic لول and Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
* Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and p ...
лол.
Pre-dating the Internet and phone texting by a century, the way to express laughter in morse code
Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one ...
is "hi hi". The sound of this in morse ('di-di-di-dit di-dit, di-di-di-dit di-dit') is thought to represent chuckling.[
Most of these variants are usually found in lowercase.
* ]555
Year 555 ( DLV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 555 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the p ...
: the Thai variation of LOL. "5" in Thai is pronounced "ha", three of them being "hahaha".
* asg: Swedish abbreviation of the term , meaning intense laughter.
* g: Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
abbreviation of the word ''griner'', which means "laughing" in Danish.[
* ha3: Malaysian variation of LOL. ''ha3'' means pronouncing ''ha'' three times, "hahaha".
* jajajá: in ]Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, the letter "j" is pronounced /x/.
* jejeje: in the Philippines is used to represent "hehehe". "j" in Filipino languages is pronounced as /h/, derived from the Spanish /x/. Its origins can be traced to SMS language. It is widely used in a Filipino youth subculture known as Jejemon
Jejemon () is a popular culture phenomenon in the Philippines. The ''Philippine Daily Inquirer'' describes Jejemons as a "new breed of hipster who have developed not only their own language and written text but also their own subculture and fas ...
s.
* kkkk: in Somali and Ethiopian languages
The languages of Ethiopia include the official languages of Ethiopia, its national and regional languages, and a large number of minority languages, as well as foreign languages.
Overview
There are 92 individual languages indigenous to Ethiop ...
spoken in the Horn of Africa, iterations of the letter "k", usually ranging between 2 and 8 k's, are used as a variation of LOL. These iterations are also used by Shona, Ndebele and other Zimbabwean languages speakers, with the longer variant being "kikiki" (emulating a laughing sound).
* mdr: Esperanto
Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international commun ...
version, from the initials of , which translates to "lot of laughs" in English.
* mdr: French version, from the initials of "mort de rire" which roughly translated means "died of laughter", although many French people also use LOL instead as it is the most widely used on the internet.
* mkm: in Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
"mkm" (being an abbreviation of the phrase "ma khanda mikonom"). This is a Dari phrase that means "I am laughing".
* ptdr: French variant from – literally meaning "broken with laughter"
* rs: in Brazil "rs" (being an abbreviation of "risos", the plural of "laugh") is often used in text based communications in situations where in English LOL would be used, repeating it ("rsrsrsrsrs") is often done to express longer laughter or laughing harder. Also popular is "kkk" (which can also be repeated indefinitely), due to the pronunciation of the letter ''k'' in Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
sounding similar to the ''ca'' in ''card'', and therefore representing the laugh "cacacacaca" (also similar to the Hebrew version above).
* wkwkwk: in Indonesian
Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to:
* Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia
** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago
** Indonesian ...
, "wkwkwk" is often used to express laughter. A new variant, "Akwoakwoak" or "Awkwoakwoak" is often used beside the original version. Both the original and the new variant are derived from the sound of Donald Duck
Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is known fo ...
laughing, something like "Wakakaka".
* חחח/ ההה: Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
version of LOL. The letter ח is pronounced x/ /x/and ה is pronounced h/ /h/ Putting them together (usually three or more in a row) makes the word khakhakha or hahaha (since vowels in Hebrew are generally not written), which is in many languages regarded as the sound of laughter.
* : Arabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...
repetition of the "" character meaning "Hahahaha" or "Hehehehe". "" is equivalent to the letter "H". The equivalents of the "a" or "e" short vowels are Arabic diacritics
The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include: consonant pointing known as (), and supplementary diacritics known as (). The latter include the vowel marks termed (; singular: , ').
The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where s ...
and are optional to write.
* ("kkk" or "kekeke") and ("hhh") are usually used to indicate laughter in Korean. ' ㅋ', is a Korean Jamo consonant representing a "k" sound, and '' represents an "h" sound. Both "" and "" represent laughter which is not very loud. However, if a vowel symbol is written, louder laughter is implied: "haha" , "hoho."
* : in Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
. Although (; "big laugh") is used, a more widespread usage is "" (ha ha ha) or "" () on internet forums. The phonetic rendering, "haha", is also common.
* (): in Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
, the kanji for laugh, is used in the same way as lol. It can be read as (literally "parentheses laugh") or just . w is also used as an abbreviation, and it is common for multiple ''w'' to be chained together. The resulting shape formed from multiple ''w'' leads to the usage of (read as ), due to its resemblance to the shape of grass.
* ("li'l", "leel") is a Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
variant of LOL. Originally it was a parody for Mykola Azarov language, so called "azirivka", in which all "o"s are replaced with "i".
The word lol in other languages
* In Dutch, lol is a word (not an acronym) which, coincidentally, means "fun" (" lollig" means "funny")
* In Welsh, lol means "nonsense" or "ridiculous" – e.g., if a person wanted to say "utter nonsense" in Welsh, they would say "lol wirion" or "rwtsh lol"
See also
* Internet meme
* Leet
Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance ...
References
Further reading
*
* —an early Usenet posting of a folk dictionary of abbreviations and emoticons, listing ''LOL'' and ROTFL
*
Claim to first use.
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lol
1990s slang
2000s slang
2010s slang
Acronyms
Internet memes introduced in the 1990s
Internet slang
Slang
Texting codes
Laughter