Not safe for work, also called not suitable for work (NSFW), is Internet slang or

shorthand Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to Cursive, longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Gr ...

used to mark links to content, videos, or

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

pages the viewer may not wish to be seen viewing in a public, formal, or controlled environment. The marked content may contain

graphic violence Graphic violence refers to the depiction of especially explicit or detailed acts of violence in mass media. It may be real, simulated live action, or animated. Intended for viewing by mature audiences, ''graphic'' in this context is a synonym ...

pornography Pornography (colloquially called porn or porno) is Sexual suggestiveness, sexually suggestive material, such as a picture, video, text, or audio, intended for sexual arousal. Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolv ...

profanity Profanity, also known as swearing, cursing, or cussing, is the usage of notionally word taboo, offensive words for a variety of purposes, including to demonstrate disrespect or negativity, to relieve pain, to express a strong emotion (such a ...

nudity Nudity is the state of being in which a human is without clothing. While estimates vary, for the first 90,000 years of pre-history, anatomically modern humans were naked, having lost their body hair, living in hospitable climates, and not ...

, slurs, or other potentially disturbing subject matter. Environments that may be problematic include

workplace A workplace is a location where someone works, for their employer or themselves, a place of employment. Such a place can range from a home office to a large office building or factory. For industrialized societies, the workplace is one of the ...

school A school is the educational institution (and, in the case of in-person learning, the Educational architecture, building) designed to provide learning environments for the teaching of students, usually under the direction of teachers. Most co ...

s, and family settings. NSFW has particular relevance for people trying to make personal use of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

at workplaces or schools that have policies prohibiting access to sexual and graphic subject matter. Conversely, safe for work (SFW) is used for links that do not contain such material, especially where the title might otherwise lead people to think that the content is NSFW. The similar expression not safe for life (NSFL) is also used, referring to content which is so nauseating or disturbing that it might be emotionally scarring to view. Links marked NSFL may contain fetish pornography, gore, or

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse committed with the necessary Intention (criminal law), intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisd ...

. Some websites, such as

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

, give users the option to designate their content as NSFW, in order to warn others of its explicit nature before they access it.

History

It has been speculated that the term evolved from an earlier form originating on message boards, not for British school kids (NFBSK), which appears online as early as the year 2000. "NSFW" itself has been used in online communities since the early 2000s, with a definition being posted to

Urban Dictionary ''Urban Dictionary'' is a crowdsourced English-language online dictionary for slang words and phrases. The website was founded in 1999 by Aaron Peckham. Originally, ''Urban Dictionary'' was intended as a dictionary of slang or cultural word ...

in 2003. In 2009, it was suggested that a future version of HTML could include "NSFW" as a standardized tag for adult material on websites that could be automatically hidden depending on user settings. By 2011, the term was common enough to be added to

Oxford Dictionaries Online ''Lexico'' was a dictionary website that provided a collection of English and Spanish dictionaries produced by Oxford University Press (OUP), the publishing house of the University of Oxford. While the dictionary content on ''Lexico'' came from ...

, with

Merriam-Webster Merriam-Webster, Incorporated is an list of companies of the United States by state, American company that publishes reference work, reference books and is mostly known for Webster's Dictionary, its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary pub ...

adding the abbreviation to its dictionary in 2015. The

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...

added the term in 2016, citing earliest evidence of usage from 2002.

References

External links

{{Pornography Internet censorship Internet slang Internet terminology Internet trolling Media content ratings systems Pornography

History

See also

References

External links