Over the last few months, I’ve repeatedly come across some acronyms that until looked up, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what they were for. They’re used most often in emails and sometimes in conversation.
The full forms are pretty basic that once you know what they are you feel stupid for not naturally (like doh!) knowing about them. Here they are:
IMO = In My Opinion; then you have IMHO = In My Honest / Humble Opinion
SNAFU = Situation Normal All F***ed Up, apparently with origins in World War II.
FYA = For Your Action?
MIA = Missing In Action (yeah, doh. I tossed around a lot for this one and was convinced it was Mission Impossible but Attemptable. Guess I was very wrong.)
COB = Close Of Business
FOB = Fresh On Board, apparently what Americans call Indians who have just moved to the US and still say things like “vay” instead of “way”, and “wery” instead of “very”.
SITKOM = (my favourite) Single Income, Two Kids, Oppressive Mortgage.
Then you have all the online chat ones like:
BFN = This took me forever to get: BYE FOR NOW. Argh.
TA = Thanks Again.
EM = Excuse Me (like, AUS!?)
In case you are like me and don’t have a clue when people type this stuff online, here is an entire list of online chat acronyms. Any more I should know of?
still can’t get over ‘SITKOM’…real funny, Abha! :))
Hi,Abha(Ahh..I got it right this time*pats himself on back*)…thanks for that list and the link…COB was known…but,definitely not SITKOM and BFN.
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Frankly,I’d been most mystified by ROFLMAO…when I first heard it. Then the rest were just,well, LOLworthy, to say the least.
A Korean-American I knew said FOB stood for “Fresh Off the Boat”
Had an officemate who replied to my email asking what EOB meant. As a joke I said it was ‘Eggs on Bread’…she totally believed it, thinking it meant first thing in the morning…I guess she has this for breakfast sometimes…had to explain (after much ROFL) that it meant ‘end of business’
Quite right…this is like office lingo.
Just to add some that I often use are EOD (End of Day), PFA ( Please Find Attached), perhaps you already know but haven’t mentioned here – FYI (For Your Information) and its variation FYI & A.