, an abbreviation for laughing
or laugh out loud
, is a common
element of Internet slang
. It was
used historically on Usenet
but is now
widespread in other forms of computer-mediated
, and even face-to-face
communication. It is one of many
for expressing bodily
reactions, in particular laughter
, as text,
including initialisms for more emphatic expressions of laughter
such as LMAO
("laughing my ass off"), ROTFL
("roll(ing) on the floor laughing"), and BWL
("bursting with laughter"), above which there is "no greater
compliment" according to technology columnist Larry Magid
. Other unrelated expansions include
the now mostly historical "lots of luck" or "lots of love" used in
These initialisms of this term are controversial, and several
authors recommend against their use, either in general or in
specific contexts such as business communications.
(professor of humanities at Stevens
Institute of Technology) and Molsk, in their essay entitled The Lost
Art of Writing, are critical of the acronyms, predicting
reduced chances of employment for students who use such acronyms,
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
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 these abbreviations, stating that
they are "no more than e-mail slang and have no place in business
Yunker and Barry in a study of online courses and how they can be
improved through podcasting
have found that
these acronyms, 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
laughing" (emphasis added). Haig singles out LOL
as one of
the three most popular initialisms in Internet slang, alongside
("bye for now") and IMHO
("in my humble
opinion"). He describes these acronyms, and the various initialisms
of Internet slang in general, as convenient, but warns that "as
ever more obscure acronyms emerge they can also be rather
confusing". 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 "[s]lang 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".
Shortis observes that ROTFL
is a means of "annotating text
with stage directions". Hueng, in discussing these acronyms in the
context of performative utterances, points out the difference
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."
notes that use of
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?". 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 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". Egan
, and other initialisms as
helpful as 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 Lindsell-Roberts,
who gives the same advice of not using them in business
correspondence, "or you won't be LOL".
Spread from written to spoken communication
, and other initialisms have crossed
from computer-mediated communication to face-to-face communication.
now sometimes use them in spoken
communication as well as in written, with ROFL
( or ) and
(pronounced , , or ), for example. David
Crystal—likening the introduction of LOL
and others into spoken language in magnitude to the revolution of
's invention of
in the 15th century—states
that this is "a brand new variety of language evolving", invented
by young people within five years, that "extend[s] the range of the
language, the expressiveness [and] the richness of the language".
Commentators disagree, saying that these new words, being
abbreviations for existing, long-used, phrases, don't "enrich"
anything; they just shorten it.
Geoffrey K. Pullum
points out that even if interjections
such as LOL
were to become very common
in spoken English, their "total effect on language" would be
Conversely, a 2003 study of college students by Naomi Baron
found that the use of these
initialisms in computer-mediated
(CMC), specifically in instant messaging
, was actually
than she had expected. The students "used few
abbreviations, acronyms, and emoticons". The spelling was
"reasonably good" and contractions were "not ubiquitous". Out of
2,185 transmissions, there were 90 initialisms in total, only 31
CMC-style abbreviations, and 49 emoticons. Out of the 90
initialisms, 76 were occurrences of LOL
Variations on the theme
Despite it being an English
acronym, it is often used by non-English speakers as-is, even in
: лол, Arabic
Variants of "LOL"
- Lawl or Lal: can refer to either a
pseudo-pronunciation of LOL. Saying "lawl" is sometimes
meant in mockery of those who use the term LOL, and not
meant as serious usage.
- lolz: 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. Can be used as a noun — e.g. "do
it for the lulz." This variation is often used on 4chan image boards. According to a New York
Times article about Internet
trolling, "lulz means the joy of disrupting another's
- lolwut: lol + wut, used to indicate
bemused laughter, confusion.
Translations in widespread use
Most of these variants are usually found in lowercase.
- mdr: French version of the expression
LOL, from the initials of "mort de rire" that roughly
translated means "dying of laughter", although many French people
now use LOL in lieu of this as it is the most widely used
on the internet.
- חחח/ההה: Hebrew version of LOL.
The letter ח is pronounced 'kh' and ה is pronounced '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. The word LOL
is sometimes transliterated (לול), but its usage is not very
- 555: The Thai variation of
LOL. "5" in Thai is pronounced "ha", three of them being
- asg: Swedish abbreviation of the term
Asgarv, meaning intense laughter.
- g: Danish abbreviation of the word
griner, which means "laughing" in Danish.
- 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.
- mkm: in Afghanistan "mkm" (being an abbreviation of the phrase "ma
khanda mikonom"). This is a Dari phrase that means "I am
- In Chinese, although 大笑
(da xiao; "big laugh") is used, a more widespread usage is "哈哈哈"
(ha ha ha) on internet forums.
- هاها: The Arabic هـــا makes the sound "ha," and is strung
together to create the sound "haha".
- In some languages with a non-Latin script, the abbreviation
"LOL" itself is also often transliterated. See for example Arabic
- In Japanese, traditionally the
kanji for laugh in parenthesis was used in the
same way as lol; （笑）. It can be read as wara and so just
w has taken over as the
abbreviation. It is often strung together in long strings denoting
the strength of the laugh (as in ちょｗｗｗ), and then interspersed
between the characters in a word to denote laughing while trying to
speak (as in みｗなｗぎｗっｗてｗきｗたｗｗｗ).
is a Dutch
word (not an acronym) which,
coincidentally, means "fun" ("lollig
" means "funny").
"nonsense" – e.g., if a person wanted to say "utter nonsense" in
Welsh, they would say "rwtsh lol".
- LMAO – entry at netlingo.
- "Credibility and Authority on Internet Message Boards", a
Master's thesis by Ryan Goudelocke, 2004
- —an early Usenet posting of a folk dictionary of abbreviations
and emoticons, listing LOL and ROTFL