LOL

[Mike Vogel]

Dear friends, I have given up. Can somebody please put me out of my misery and tell me what LOL means??

As a bridge player and a reader of Bridge books, the only thing it means to me is "little old ladies". This describes the sort of player one finds at bridge clubs who have been playing since the year dot and look as if they haven't a clue but are as sharp as needles and the sophisticated player well read in new ideas, the odds and safety plays, etc underestimates them at his considerable peril!

[alan refail]

Hi Mike

As I've mentioned before on the forum, it's Welsh for "nonsense"

[oldherbaceous]

I used to love watching, "Call my bluff", so here goes.

Round these parts many moons ago, there used to be a fair bit of poaching going on. So the poachers often used to leave somEone to keep an eye out for the gamekeepers, these where known as, look out Lil's.

This then got shortened to, LOL, and then often got used after many a sentence.

So there is the answer to LOL.

[Victoria]

My children tell me is text speak for 'laugh out loud'

[glallotments]

That's my understanding too Victoria - at first I thought it meant lots of love and wondered why complete strangers signed off to me in this way!!!

[peter]

ROFL and PMSL.

[donedigging]

I understand them to mean;
p*ss myself laughing pmsl
roll on floor laughing rofl

[Mike Vogel]

Oh, right. textspeak rules, though i'd prefer "lots of laughs". Thanks everyone.

ATB
mike

[alan refail]

Hi Mike

If you have to ask for a translation it serves to show how damned annoying some of this e-mail/txtspk really is. If you have to translate a post on here it can get annoying.

I bet there'd be some muttering if I posted in Welsh expecting people to translate.

Promise not to use LOL but I am tempted by the Arabic equivalent

هاها

pronounced ha-ha

[peter]

Pam Alan, yr hyn a allai reswm posibl sydd gennym dros wrthwynebu'r chi wneud y fath beth?

[KGAdmin]

It's actually a myth that LOL (or rofl) are 'text' speak per-se - as those acronyms have been used in older text-based chat systems on-line for many years.

If anyone remembers (or uses) IRC, or as I have used since 1996 - MUCK/MUD systems - these acronyms have always been around.

Interestingly (or not perhaps) new acronyms are appearing in modern net gaming systems 'IDK' (I don't Know) - seems popular now, and 'LFM' (Looking For More)

Jason

[Elaine]

In one of the on-line games I play, interaction between players is part of the game and adding comments to requests for help and gifted items is usual. I've noticed a few acronyms creeping in lately, such as;
TYVM = thank you very much.
TIA = thanks in advance.

Another one I've come across is IMHA = in my humble opinion.

I don't use them myself, preferring to type out the words and I don't use lol because I just don't like it. I use the colon/hyphen/D which produces the equivalent of

One of my (very much) younger friends sends me emails and text messages which take me ages to "decode"....I finally asked her to use English rather than text-speak because I couldn't work out what half of it meant! She thought it was hilarious but did as I asked.....no wonder she uses text-speak...her spelling is atrocious.

Cheers.

[glallotments]

When texting I'm afraid I even use capital letters and punctuation!

[Beryl]

Perhaps you clever cloggs out there can tell me what this means
"}:"|/-"

I quite often find messages on Facebook with a few of these and haven't a clue what they might mean.

LOL (always thought this was lots of love)
Beryl.

[Monika]

I think it's more difficult to use "txt spk" than to spell everything out, using predictive texting! One of my twin daughters always writes everything in full (she has to, because she uses it a lot for work), the other one uses "txt spk" and I find it most annoying to read.