Top 50 Twitter Acronyms, Abbreviations And Initialisms - Digiphile

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This past January,  I wrote up the “Top 15 Twitter acronyms” for @pistachio‘s Touchbase blog. As readers rightly pointed out, many were abbreviations or initialisms – hence the title for this post. I followed that up with a “Top 10 NSFW Twitter Abbreviations.” This list combines the two, and includes key additions like HT, RE and FML. If you have others you think I missed, please add ’em in the comments – and follow me on Twitter!

@ Reply to [username]

AFAIK As Far as I Know

b/c Because

BFN Bye For now

BR Best Regards

BTW By the Way

DM Direct Message. d username sends one.

EM Email

FB Facebook

FF Usually #FF for Follow Friday. #FollowFriday is supposed to work better than it does. If you #FF someone, take the characters to explain why.

FFS For F–k’s Sake

FML F–k My Life

FTF Face To Face. Also, F2F. Or the Fair Trade Federation. Many other options.

FTL For The Loss

FTW For The Win

FWD Forward

FWIW For What It’s Worth

HT Hat tip

HTH Hope That Helps

IMHO In My Humble Opinion

IMO In My Opinion

IRL In Real Life

JV Joint Venture

J/K Just Kidding

LI LinkedIn

LMAO Laughing My Ass Off

LMK Let Me Know

LOL Laughing Out Loud

MT Modified Tweet

NSFW Not Safe For Work

OH Overheard

OMFG Oh My F–king God

OMG Oh My God

PRT Partial Retweet (at the start of a tweet). Sometimes “Please Retweet” Old School: Party

RE In reply to. As in, use RE for @replies on Twitter. Used in front of the @ to ensure all followers can see the conversation. Further ontext: “Community, @replies, #fixreplies and Change”

RR Re-Run

RT Retweet

RTF Read The FAQ. RTFF shows up too. RTF also stands for Rich Text File.

RTFM Read The F-ing Manual

RTHX Thanks For The ReTweet

SNAFU Situation Normal All F–ked Up

SOB Son Of a Bitch

STFU Shut The F–k Up

TMB Tweet Me Back

TMI Too Much Information

via My one cheat: “via” is not an abbreviation or acronym. It simply means that a tweet is from @username, though in some cases it may mean that it’s also an exact retweet. Tricky, this online user-defined lingo and twitribution is.

WTF What The F–k

WTH What The Hell

YMMV Your Mileage May Vary

YW You’re Welcome

BONUS:

Since this list was first published, some of these have become more popular and others have emerged. RT is still – by far – the most frequent acronym. New additions are added below, along with many suggestions in the comments.

TIL Today I learned.

TIL in Hawaii that Poke Tacos are a thing.A delicious, delicious thing.

— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) February 19, 2013

NB Nota Bene. Make sure to read the comments, where there are many great additions.

ICYMI In Case You Missed IT [HT @BrianStelter]

Update: Justin Kownacki thinks we should stop saying “in case you missed it” on Twitter. (That includes ICYMI, too.) I agree.

CX Correction

RTQ Read The Question or Retweet Question

STFW Search The F —ing Web

TL Timeline

RT = retweet, MT = modified tweet, DM = direct message, FF = Follow Friday, h/t = hat tip, TL = Timeline, OH = overheard. Now you know.

— Margarita Noriega (@margafret) April 1, 2014

TL;DR Too long; Didn’t Read.

TT Translated Tweet.

Reminder: when I use TT in front of a tweet, it means “translated tweet.” I’m mostly using my high-school French and Google, so be warned.

— Andy Carvin (@acarvin) January 16, 2013

RLRT: Real Life Retweet. To repeat on Twitter what someone said in person.

RLRT: I love the Internet. – @yurivictor

— Matt Mansfield (@mattmansfield) May 17, 2014

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