OMG!

By Brad Dison
 
In what we know as the technology age, many of us use slang and shortened version of words called acronyms on social media and in text messages.  Some claim that the abbreviations save time, while others, myself included, have to spend time searching online for possible meanings of acronyms such as BTAIM, ELI5, FOMO, and TBBH.  We almost have to be codebreakers to decipher the messages. Here are some of the more popular acronyms:

BRB – Be Right Back

BTW – By the Way

DYK – Do You Know or Did You Know

HBD – Happy Birthday

IDC – I Don’t Care

IDK – I Don’t Know

IMO – In My Opinion

JK – Just Kidding

LTB – Looking to Buy

LOL – Laugh Out Loud

OMG – Oh My God! or Oh My Gosh!

 

Using only acronyms, one person wrote the following:

“GAS 2U!

DQMOT, BSF IDK WCA 2TXT W/LOA. IYO, ITS EZ &PDQ… IDTS. IMHO, ARE =ADIH. TBH, FUBAR &2M2H. GIAR, PLZ! KISS.

.02

RX

If you received this message, would you be able to determine its meaning?  Here is a translation:

Greetings and Salutations to you!

Don’t quote me on this, but seriously folks I don’t know who cares anyway to text with lists of acronyms.  In your opinion, it’s easy and pretty darn quick… I don’t think so. In my humble opinion, an acronym-rich environment is another day in hell. To be honest. It’s *fouled* up beyond all recognition and too much to handle. Give it a rest, please! Keep it simple, stupid.

Just my two cents.

Regards,

Many acronyms were created for use with social media and texting in mind.  One of the most popular acronyms is OMG.  So popular is this acronym that it has entered the English and foreign languages as its own independent word.  It has entered our popular culture.  Television programs and films occasionally show youngish kids in the coolest clothes of the era saying something shocking followed by OMG!  When more emphasis is needed, they say Ooooooo Mmmmmmm Ggggggg!

Here is another letter which includes just one acronym:

“My Dear Friend,

I am here for a few days longer before rejoining my “Wise men” at Victory House— “The World forgetting, By the World Forgot!” but some Headlines in the newspapers have utterly upset me!  Terrible!!  The German Fleet to assist the Land operations in the Baltic.  Landing the German Army South of Reval.  We are five times stronger at Sea than our enemies and here is a small Fleet that we could gobble up in a few minutes playing the great vital Sea part of landing an Army in the enemies’ rear and probably capturing the Russian Capital by Sea!  This is “Holding the ring” with a vengeance!  Are we really incapable of a big Enterprise?  I heard that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis—O.M.G. (Oh! My God!)—Shower it on the Admiralty!!

Yours,

Fisher

9/9/17.”

 The writer felt that the reader would probably not understand the acronym, so he defined it in parenthesis.  It was in this letter, dated September 9, 1917, that the first known usage of the acronym OMG appeared, well before what we know as the technological age, several decades before the invention of the internet, social media, and text messages.  The first person to receive an OMG was future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Source: “OMG! The First Time Someone Used the Phrase “OMG”!” HuffPost, 6 Aug. 2012,
www.huffpost.com/entry/first-known-use-of-omg-winston-churchill_n_1748042. Accessed 6 Aug. 2023.


To report an issue or typo with this article – CLICK HERE

Leave a Reply Cancel reply