LOL

LOL, or lol, is an acronym for "laughing out loud", and a popular element of Internet slang, which can be used to indicate amusement. It was first used almost exclusively on Usenet, but has since become widespread in other forms of computer-mediated communication and even face-to-face communication. It is one of many acronyms for expressing bodily reactions, in particular laughter, as text, including acronyms for more emphatic expressions of laughter such as LMAO ("laughing my ass off") and ROFL or ROTFL ("rolling on the floor laughing"). In 2003, the list of acronyms was said to "grow by the month", and they were collected along with emoticons and smileys into folk dictionaries that are circulated informally amongst users of Usenet, IRC, and other forms of (textual) computer-mediated communication. These acronyms are controversial, and several authors recommend against their use, either in general or in specific contexts such as business communications. The Oxford English Dictionary first listed LOL in March 2011.

History

In the early to mid-1980s, Wayne Pearson was reportedly the first person to have used LOL while responding to a friend's joke in a pre-World Wide Web digital chat room called Viewline. Instead of writing "hahaha," as he had done before when he found something humorous, Pearson stated that he instead typed "LOL" to symbolize extreme laughter. Although the account is commonly accepted as true, no written record of the conversation has been found, and the exact date of origin is unknown. The earliest recorded mention of LOL in the contemporary meaning of "Laughing Out Loud" was made in a list of common online acronyms on the May 8, 1989 issue of the electronic newsletter FidoNews, according to the Oxford English Dictionary and linguist Ben Zimmer.

A 2003 study of college students by Naomi Baron found that the use of these initialisms in computer-mediated communication (CMC), specifically in instant messaging, was actually lower than she had expected. The students "used few abbreviations, acronyms, and emoticons". Out of 2,185 transmissions, there were 90 initialisms in total; 76 were occurrences of LOL.On March 24, 2011, LOL, along with other acronyms, was formally recognized in an update of the Oxford English Dictionary. In their research, it was determined that the earliest recorded use of LOL as an initialism was for "little old lady" in the 1960s. Gabriella Coleman references "lulz" extensively in her anthropological studies of Anonymous. LOL, ROFL, and other initialisms have crossed from computer-mediated communication to face-to-face communication. David Crystal – likening the introduction of LOL, ROFL, and others into spoken language in magnitude to the revolution of Johannes Gutenberg's invention of movable type 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". However Geoffrey K. Pullum argues that even if interjections such as LOL and ROFL were to become very common in spoken English, their "total effect on language" would be "utterly trivial". While LOL originally meant "laughing out loud," modern usage is different, and it is commonly used for irony, as an indicator of second meanings, and as a way to soften statements.

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