Last updated Nov 7, 2002.

One thing that is commonly confusing to people new to the Internet or just new to a particular subculture of the internet, is the vernacular used by others who are more experienced in that aspect of communication.  No one page can hope to give a thorough tutorial in Internet Slang, but as a relatively experienced Internet user, one who is tired of seeing so many of the same questions asked over and over again, I can at least write a decent introduction to Internet Slang page.  Oddly enough, this is it.

This page is divided into the following sections.

  • Internet Acronyms
  • Internet Slang
  • AOLese
  • Hacker Speak
  • Emoticons

In verbal communication, or business communication, in the real world, things tend to be stated clearly and in full terms.  Pretty much everyone knows basic abbreviations like "w/o" for "without" or "BYOB" for "Bring Your Own Beer", and you hardly even need to know those, to get by.  No one says "double-u slash oh", they say "without".  It's quicker with your voice to not abbreviate, most of the time.  It can be much longer to abbreviate in some cases, as you hear every time a commercial announcer relates an Internet address.  It's a shame that "w" is by far the longest letter in the English language, to express verbally, and is used in most website URLs.

The point being, abbreviations aren't especially needed or desired in verbal communication, and in business or other formal writing they are poor form and therefore not used.  They are common in newspapers, mainly in the classified ads, solely for space saving, where advertisers are paying by the word or inch. Things like "3 bdrm, 1 1/2 bth" in real estate ads are expected and understood.

On the Internet though, where almost all communication is typed, anything that saves a few letters is of great utility, and new abbreviations and acronyms are created and popularized daily.  Slang isn't always designed for time saving though, much of the time it evolves organically, and new slang terms come about to describe new paradigms, new ideas or concepts that require a specific term for them, a word or two that can be used to express a larger concept in capsule form.  There are of course numerous abbreviations and acronyms in use in real life, terms like "yuppies" or "IRS" or "IPO" are used daily, but generally speaking, there is far less abbreviation going on in RL (real life) than online.

This page covers general Internet slang and abbreviations and acronyms, with some genre-specific terms.  Any interest niche you submerge yourself in online will have its own lexicon, and you'll be confused by many of the terms initially.  Gaming is famous for this, since virtually every popular game will have nearly every important term in the game abbreviated by players for quicker discussion in forums and in-game chat.  To latch onto what people are talking about, you'll need to learn a lot about the game.  Generally you can figure out what they mean from the context and since most abbreviations take the first letters of the full words.  Diablo II for example has players often mentioning "WF" (Windforce, a bow), "GF" (Grandfather, a sword), "BO" (Battle Orders, a character skill), "WW" (Whirlwind, a character skill), etc.  As you can see, if you know the most popular items and character skills in the game, you'll be able to figure out what people are talking about.  This holds true for most things on the Internet, and before trying to follow along with the often fast-paced discussion on forums or live online, you'd do well to read up on some background information of the topic at hand.

There are innumerable Internet sites that cover slang.  They range from simple lists of acronyms or abbreviations, to long, detailed lists, and there are even some that delve into the history and origins of Internet speech.  You can easily search some out through Google, though the vast majority seem to be just long lists of acronyms or abbreviations, and virtually none have any context on them.  Which is what I find most interesting about it, hence how I'm doing it on this page.

For general information about how internet slang came into being, check out the Jargon Dictionary.  It's very informative, though highly-technical in places.  Lots of pages I have no idea what they are talking about. 

Acronyms are letters that stand for several words, almost always the initial letters of the words.  This makes it pretty easy to guess what they are, from the context, in most cases.  These are general purpose terms of use, phrases you might see in any sort of discussion on any topic.  There are hundreds of these, I'll only list the most common.  Much larger lists, including dozens I've never ever seen used, can be found here or here, and perhaps the Uber-Acronym list of all is this searchable one.

Feel free to dispute someone's use of acronyms if you feel it's egregious, I.E. they are making up new and indecipherable acronyms, or ones that no one will use willingly.  At the same time, you can add your own to the debate, but don't expect other people to necessarily know what you are talking about.

WTF: What the Fuck
WTH: What the Hell.
All purpose "huh?" remarks, considered slightly obscene, but not really profanity.

STFU: Shut the Fuck Up.
An all purpose rejoinder, often used sarcastically. Much like WTF, it's not really considered profanity, at least not to the level it would be if you actually typed out the full words.

BBIAB: Be Back in a Bit
BBL: Be Back Later
BRB: Be Right Back
BRT: Be Right There

AFK: Away from Keyboard
Generally used to mean, "away from computer", not just keyboard, (which would imply you were there and observing, and just couldn't type back, say if you were painting your nails) and is often stated with a time, such as "AFK 10 min".

ATM: At The Moment
IOW: In Other Words
BTW: By The Way
AFAIK: As Far As I Know
IIRC: If I Recall Correctly
IMHO: In My Humble Opinion (Sometimes "Honest", but usually "Humble", which has a somewhat sarcastic connotation.)

YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary (Not a driving reference, it's used for all sorts of things, as a sort of "it worked for me, but might not for you" warning.)

OMFG: Oh My Fucking God
JFC: Jesus Fucking Christ
FFS: For Fuck's Sake
All purpose declarations of surprise or shock, considered moderately strong oaths, and can be used interchangably.
FFs: French Fries (note the lowercase "s" to avoid confusion)

IRC: Internet Relay Chat (online chat service)
ICQ: The first super popular instant messaging service.
AIM: AOL instant messaging, disdained by old school ICQ'ers.
There are numerous other instant messaging services, most of which are not compatible with the others, while a few are designed to let you use one and talk to friends using other clients.

DL: Download
UL: Upload

Gratz: Congratulations
GG: Good Game (generally used in game chat)

LOL: Laugh Out Loud
LMAO: Laughing My Ass off
LMFAO: Laughing My Fucking Ass off
ROTF: Rolling on the Floor (often ROTFLMFAO)

BF: Boyfriend
GF: Girlfriend

RPG: Role Playing Game
MMO: Massively Multiplayer Online (game, usually MMORPG)
RTS: Real Time Strategy (game)
FPS: First Person Shooter
FPS: Frames Per Second

POS: Piece of Shit

QA: Quality Assurance (Software testing department in most programming companies.)
Q&A: Question and Answer

OT: Off Topic (Used in forum posts most often, to warn readers that a message is not on the usual forum topic.)

b/c: Because
k: Okay
TA: Thanks alot
Danke: Thanks (German)

Thx: Thanks
Plz: Please
Both are considered borderline AOLese, and are often looked down upon, as it seems somewhat rude to abbreviate words used to be express gratitude or ask a favor.

L8R: Later
ne1: Anyone
Abbreviations and Acronyms that feature numbers mixed in with letters are considered poor form; borderline-AOLese or wanna-be l33t speak, by most adults.

ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Interchange. This is the technical definition; in practice when you see someone throwing out a bunch of weird non-standard characters like, "®Æòœ7¦Ç" for example, this is done with ASCII, which selects characters from the windows Character Map.  This can be useful to type in symbols for Pounds Sterling (£=0163) or Yen (¥=0165) or the Euro (€=0128), the copyright (©=0169) symbol, fractions (¼=0188, ½=0189, ¾=0190) the 3 (é=0233) in "résumé", etc.

To use ASCII characters, you need to see the Character Map. Hit F1 in Windows from your desktop or a folder, and type in "Character Map" into the help search, and you'll get an option to open the Character Map.  You can select characters from it and paste them in, or else memorize their numbers, and type them into a document directly by holding down Alt and hitting the numbers on the keypad, then releasing Alt.  You must press and release Alt for each ASCII character you wish to insert.  The ASCII codes will vary somewhat from font to font, and lots of stylistic/artsy fonts won't have anything but letters (some don't even have numbers or punctuation), while business fonts such as MS Sans Serif, Verdana, Arial, New Times Roman, etc will have every imaginable character, generally with the same codes for them from font to font.  This is something the font-creator must implement, which is why lots of fonts don't have more than letters and numbers.

Slang on the Internet incorporates all slang used in real life, but adds much to it.  Similar to Internet abbreviations, these are largely created and popularized for their time/letter-saving qualities, but as with all slang, they are also useful to convey a complicated concept in a quick word.

sux: sucks
suxorz: sucks
rox: rocks
fuxed: fucked
thx: thanks
As you can see, just about any "ck" or "cks" or even other similar letters making the same sound can be replaced with an "x".  This is mostly an AOLese or Hacker Speak convention, but you'll see it often enough elsewhere.

Noob: Newbie (Also newb or n00b, plural Noobz), one who is inexperienced or new to the Internet or some aspect of online life. Often used as an insult, or attempted insult, since most often the one saying "Noob!" is just trying to hide their own lack of knowledge or insecurity.

Troll: Insulting term for a general idiot in a forum or other online meeting place.  Literally, the term comes from "trolling" a type of fishing that involves dragging bait along and hoping a fish will take it, and was initially used to describe a forum poster or IRC chatter who made intentionally outrageous comments in an effort to get outraged responses.  It has come to be both a noun and a verb, and often is used in humorous mentions of the mythical creature that lives under bridges, eats goats, etc.  If some troll is trolling in a forum, and someone takes the bait, others will comment, "Bad goat!  Don't feed the troll!", or "Hide the goats, a troll has arrived."

Lamer: A loser, victim, idiot, etc.

hack: To break into a game or server.  More generally, to engage in any sort of cheating or do anything outside the allowed rules of a game or system.  Often used as an insult or accusation.
Hacker: A person who hacks or is suspected of hacking.
Crack: To hack a product and remove the copy protection from it, generally for redistribution as a downloadable file.
Warez: Pirated software that has been cracked.

Kewl: Cool.  Semi-AOLese for something good or neat or nifty.  Also "k3wl".

AOLese is a gutter tongue; a bastardized language combining acronyms, slang, h4xor sp33k (hacker speech, see below) and generally execrable grammar and spelling. It is used almost entirely by young, male, Internet newbies, most often ones on their parent's AOL account (hence the name), who somehow have come to the conclusion that this type of speech is cool. You could also call it Hotmailese, since quite a few users have that goddawful free mail service with which to spread their insidious yammerings.  I have extensive experience with this sort of grammar, since in the nearly 4 years I've worked on Diabloii.net, I have received thousands of emails written in AOLese, and at least 75% of the mails with this sort of grammar are from @aol.com, with probably 20% coming from @hotmail.com.

This type of speech should be avoided at all costs if you want anyone (other than other AOLese users) to take anything you have to say seriously.  It's universally agreed upon by adults and more advanced users that only trolls and noobs speak in this fashion, and you might as well try to win a debate using AOLese as argue before the Supreme Court using Pig Latin.

That warning being given, here is what this tongue consists of. AOLese is difficult to define, but like pornography, you will probably know it when you see it.  The line between AOLese and someone using a lot of Internet slang, or hacker speak, can be difficult to draw.  AOLese generally adds enough stupid, nonsensical comments, lack of proper capitalization, misspellings, and poor grammar to put it in a class by itself.

Keep in mind that there is a difference between true AOLese and the poor writing of someone who just isn't a good writer.  Someone who is just learning English, a child or perhaps an adult who has another native tongue, will tend to butcher the language, and perhaps use a lot of abbreviations, not knowing any better.  Have patience with people who are working on their language skills; save your vitriol for trolls who intentionally subject the rest of us to their ill-formed syntax.  Especially if they think it's k3wl.

Also keep in mind that not every AOLer is using AOLese, and not every AOLese'er is an AOLer.  It's entirely possible to find experienced users on real ISPs, often cable modems or DSL, who just lack the common sense to know better than to use AOLese.  More commonly, you'll encounter AOLers who are are adults, usually ones new to the Internet or just not on it often enough to feel the need to move up to a real ISP.  They'll use perfect English, though often not type very fast or accurately, and will probably have no idea at all what AOLese is, other than some weird language they saw on an email to their kid one time.  While you can safely assume an AOLer won't be real up on Internet conventions, or a very experienced user, that's nothing to hate them for.  Remember, we used to have real lives away from our computers also.

RaNdOm CapS: A very common AOLese trait, this annoying style of writing is common among users who virtually never manage proper capitalization, but somehow are able to find their shift key every other letter the rest of the time.  There is no rhyme or reason to the substitution.  Sometimes you'll see every other letter, sometimes every consonant, other times it's totally random, about every 3rd or 4th letter.  Jarring to the eye and of no possible value, this is quintessential AOLese.

R4nd0m Num3r41s : Similar to (and often combined with) random caps, this is the practice of substituting numbers for letters, to no obvious benefit.  This differs from Hacker Speak in that it's vastly overused, and often includes pointless substitutions, such as zero for "o", or "1" for "l", changes that can't even be discerned in some fonts. (Which is sometimes the point, to disguise a name so it's impossible to squelch them.)

Horrible Grammar: This is a near-universal trait of AOLese, and is often intentional, though it's a rare AOLese speaker who could manage proper English if you held a gun to their head (though it would certainly be fun to test that theory).  They'll mangle the language horribly, entirely missing the subtlety of verb tense changes, proper pronoun use, decent sentence structure, etc. More than that, you don't need to be an English teacher to spot the problems in their writing. Most AOLese is intentionally full of fragmentary sentences, run-ons, random, non-sequitor'esque remarks, and stupidity, all of which are of course liberally studded with acronyms, abbreviations, slang, and random caps/numerals.  Proper AOLese should be almost indecipherable to a real person. 

Overuse of Terms: Most AOLese will beat a few popular terms absolutely to death, due to the lack of imagination or creativity in the writers of this dialect. See the most common terms in Hacker Speak, listed below, and expect "skillz", "l33t", "noobz", "sux", etc to appear in nearly every sentence.

Remember, it's all about degrees of descending into the void. AOLese doesn't feature anything not seen in other types of Internet Slang, it just has far too many of them, all thrown in together.  Many writers operate on the borderline of AOLese, stumbling over the edge like a drunk unable to walk a straight line at a sobriety test, and then recovering for a few awkward sentences.

This generally-loathed form of expression is used mostly by kids in an often-successful effort to annoy those who are more literate than themselves.  It differs from AOLese in that it's more controlled, and can be inserted into sentences that are otherwise perfectly-written.

Hacker Speak can be used by decent writers, and throwing in term or two here or there can add amusing emphasis.  If you are discussing something extremely geeky, you might want to role-play a bit, in sarcastic fashion. For example, if you died on something stupid or easy in a game, and as your friends were laughing, you could say, "Fear my l33t skillz!" In this case it would be understood that you were mocking yourself, pretending to be a troll, and your friends would probably find it funny, if they weren't trolls themselves, in which case 1) they shouldn't be your friends, and 2) they wouldn't realize it was a joke.  You could say the exact same thing in a different situation, such as bragging about how good you were at a game in a forum, and you'd be universally regarded as a 13 y/o wannabe loser.  So don't do it, or risk the consequences.

The fashion of substituting numbers for letters began (apparently) with hackers, as a sort of shorthand and an inside joke, and also as a way to circumvent chat logging bots.  Bots would be programmed to log text or boot users who used certain key terms.  Substituting numbers for letters enabled people to say what they wanted to say, without being caught so easily.  Thanks to Tomas for the tip.

Leet speak has grown steadily less cool since it's been corrupted and ruined by overuse, especially by non-hackers, or hacker wanna-bes; AKA "script kiddies".  This form of writing is really a type of AOLese at this point, and should not be used by anyone other than for a joke effect.

There are a few very common l33t terms, (that's one), but the basic rules of the spelling can be applied to virtually any word.  As such a full lexicon isn't reasonable, but once you know the basic rules of grammar, so to speak, you'll be as fluent as any clueless fat 14 y/o from Topeka on his mom's AOL being flamed in a Quake 3 newsgroup.

And what more could you ask for?

Basic Letter Substitution Patterns
Many are based on similarity of appearance to either the upper or lowercase letter.

3: e or E
4: a or A
z: s (usually ending a word, as a plural)
ph: f (phonetic)
c: k (k used when phonetic, to intentionally misspell)
x: ck (phonetic)
33: ea (sometimes 34 is used, usually 33, to intentionally misspell, as in "sp33k")
@: a (pronounced "a", not "at".  No, it's not logical.)
1: I or i

Common Words
Most of these use the l33t spelling, of course.

l33t: elite (adjective, meaning far better than average)
skillz: skills
roxor: rocks, as in "that rocks!" but even more so
ph34r: fear (also ph33r)
sux: suck (or suxor, as in, "You suxor, noob!"
noob: Newbie (plural = noobz)
tr00: True
w00t: "woot".  An all purpose happy sound effect.
j00: You

Advanced usage: Ph34r my tr00 l33t sk1llz, j00 suxor noobz!

An internet invention, these are punctuation marks used to make facial expressions.  Emoticons serve as shorthand for emotions, and are also useful as garnishes to your words, to indicate that you are sad, or joking, or angry, etc.  People often fail to grasp sarcasm or satire in written material, and emoticons are useful to tip your attitude, and quicker and less mood-killing than a long aside about how, "I'm just being sarcastic here."

Emoticons are useful, since they can at least partially take the place of facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice, all of which give clues to meaning beyond what your mere words convey, in face to face dialogue. They can easily be overused though, or used in a far too cutesy fashion, somewhat like a girl dotting her i's with big pink hearts.  If your email has more than one or two emoticons in it, you are probably overusing them, and if you have one on each paragraph, or even each sentence, you need to be hosed down.  Don't spend all day worrying about it, but scan over your just-written paragraph.  If your meaning is clear, then there's no need to throw in redundant emoticons.  A related issue is overuse of "LOL".  Some people are getting into the habit of throwing these in nearly every sentence, and not meaning it in any way as an actual "laughing out loud" (or if they are they need to lay off the Nitrous Oxide) just as a sort of punctuation.  One will suffice, thank you.

Various internet sites list huge stacks of emoticons, the vast majority of which you'll never ever see anyone use, thank God.  Remember, little girl, big pink hearts dotting every i; it's easy to get carried away.

The whole point in emoticons is that you can figure out what they are just at a glance.  Most of them are viewed sideways, such as the classic :), which is a pair of eyes and a smiling mouth.  Sometimes emoticons are pointed the other way, (: though this is non-standard usage.  You can incorporate an emoticon with actual standard punctuation, though this tends to be somewhat confusing.  If you are making a joke in an aside (like this ;) you might want to highlight the joke with the emoticon, and you need an ) to end the aside.  It looks odd to do the :)) or :) ), which is the emoticon and then the ending parenthesis, but the other way is confusing.  Try to reword the sentence, or just suffer.

:) -- Smile.  Also =) or :-), or ;~), etc.

;) -- Wink, often to indicate a joke or sarcasm.  Also ;-), etc.

:( -- Frown, unhappy.  Also =(, :-(, etc.

:/ -- Glum, or indifference.  Basically a less sad frown.  Also =|, :-\, etc.

;-* -- Kissing face.

There are hundreds of others, do a quick google search for them and you'll see dozens of sites with hundreds of emoticons listed.  I don't recommend using the cutsey ones with half a dozen symbols any more than I recommend using one after every sentence.  They really scream "I'm a newbie." to other users, and the thrill wears off quickly.

Sideways emoticons are a more-recent innovation, and seem to be mostly Korean in invention, or at least that's where they were popularized. These are basically the same as the original emoticons in usage, and there are multiple versions of each style.  The eyes are made with ^'s, (shift+6) and are thought to be copied from anime style animation, where eyes are often very stylized and oversized, and happy smiling characters often have just a slit shaped like the ^ character.  The middle character is the nose or mouth, depending on the expression

^_^ -- Basic smile.  Also ^~^, ^¿^, etc. (¿=0191)

(^¿^) -- Face with ears.

~_~ -- Sleeping face.

º¿º -- Funny face, with the eyes and nose in the middle.  The circles aren't "o", they are the degree symbol.  The easiest way to make this one is to do it Alt+167, Alt+168, Alt+167.  That's easy to remember and quick to type.  Remember to press and hold Alt, but release it after each character.

If you think some term should be added, let me know.  I expect I'll be adding more to this page over time, as I remember things I forgot to include, or new terms come into popular usage.

Thanks to Zac and Steve.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.