Mine is OOO for Out Of Office. I always misread it in my head like a ghost and it takes me a few seconds to process. It also doesn’t translate to speech—you have to say the whole thing.
Interested to see if others have similar acronyms they beef with.
Mine are “lol” and “lmao”. I get what they originally meant, and I get why most people use them nowadays. It’s just that they often signal “I have nothing to contribute, but still expect people to read my crap”.
As a second (third?) place, “WYSIWYG”. If you’re going to coin such verbose acronym, might as well sub it with an actual word, like, dunno, “transparent”.
Isn’t lol short for “laughing out loud”? Or have I been wrong for like 20 goddamn years?
No. You’re quite correct.
You and me both! I always heard “laughing out loud” as well.
Wiktionary lists both “laughing out loud” and “lots of laughs”. Nowadays though it’s neither; on a pragmatic level it doesn’t convey “I’m laughing” / “I laughed”, it conveys amusement and/or lack of seriousness, depending on the context.
I actually kinda love WYSIWYG because it’s pronounced “wizzy-wig” in some circles and that always makes me chuckle
Are there circles in which it’s NOT pronounced like that?
WYSIWYG, when pronounced, sounds like an Irish town with weird spelling. Like Northern Whisyghwhikh, Dublin county
What about ROFL?
Not common in general usage nowadays. Perhaps it avoided the shift?