What does LMAO mean?
YOU have probably seen LMAO written in digital communications, often on social media posts or in emails.
It is one of many abbreviations that are commonplace these days as people seek to shorten messages on platforms like Twitter.
What does LMAO mean?
LMAO means 'Laughing My Ass Off'. It is used to convey the fact that something is funny.
It can be considered as a stronger version of LOL, which stands for 'laugh out loud'.
LMAO can be written in upper or lower case.
However, it should never be used in formal communications. It is generally only used in social messaging and is particularly useful to keep your word count down.
There are a number of ways that the abbreviation has been advanced over the years.
For example, some people use LMFAO - 'Laughing My F**king Ass Off'.
Another development has been to add more O's to the end, such as LMAOOO - which means 'Laughing My Ass Off and Off and Off'.
More recently LMAO has also been known to mean 'Laughing My Anxiety Off'.
Where did the abbreviation come from?
LMAO is one of the earliest abbreviations to emerge in the era of digital communications.
It is said the origins can be traced back to a game of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons in 1990.
According to Mike Vuolo, host of the Lexicon Valley podcast, an elf character called Torquin typed “LMAO!” after a human female Monk suggested that a dwarf fighter called Daldin might want some hijiki - an oriental sea vegetable which contains arsenic - for lunch.
The phrase slowly began to spread among early internet adopters, and exploded into common parlance with the birth of social platforms such as Twitter.
How is LMAO used on Twitter and Snapchat?
LMAO is used to express that you find something really funny.
For example: "Did you see her fall over? I was LMAO". It is often used in conjunction with laughing emoji faces.
The abbreviation is useful on platforms like Twitter and Snapchat where character numbers limited.
Twitter was limited to 140 characters until 2017 when that limit was doubled to 280.
Snapchat captions are limited to 32 characters, although there are hacks to get around this.