WTF? OMG, LOL, & FYI Added To Oxford English Dictionary!

Oxford English Dictionary Adds OMG LOL and FYI to Its Pages

Internet lingo enters dictionary

O RLY?

The online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has officially added OMG, LOL, and FYI to its pages.

Here’s what the dictionary had to say about these additions:

“Of course in such a context initialisms are quicker to type than the full forms, and (in the case of text messages, or Twitter, for example) they help to say more in media where there is a limit to a number of characters one may use in a single message. OMG and LOL are found outside of electronic contexts, however – in print, and even in spoken use where there often seems to be a bit more than simple abbreviation going on.”

And here’s OED on uses of these “words,” pre-Internet:

“OMG is from a personal letter from 1917; the letters LOL had a previous life, starting in 1960, denoting an elderly woman [as ‘little old lady’] and the entry for FYI, for example, shows it originated in the language of memoranda in 1941.”

More from OED’s chief editor John Simpson:

“It is remarkable to see how much the environment has changed over the ten years since the OED first went online.”

This is great news! You can say what you want about Internet lingo compromising the integrity of the English language...but there’s no denying the fact that Scrabble just got a WHOLE lot easier!

Will U start using OMG, LOL, and FYI more, now that they’re officially in the dictionary?