OMG!!! FYI - it's official English!!!

OMG!!! it's official! OMG a common saying on the net for "Oh My God", Oh My Goodness", or "Oh My Gosh!" is finally accepted as an English abbreviation. It's grown out of the SMS instant messaging and social media speak on twitter and facebook and landed itself in the Oxford English Dictionary! Apparently it has been around long enough to warrant inclusion, but are they jumping the gun here? LOL! Has it really been around for that long? FYI there is an OMG facts website , an OMG news site, and several facebook and twitter sites as well, but none of them can claim to know the exact origin of the usage - but generally it's known as 'internet slang' and has been made popular in the 2000's.

Look it up in the OED! (Oxford English Dictionary) and you'll find it has been around for quite a while! The first quotation for OMG is from a personal letter from 1917, according to the dictionary.

 

The respected British dictionary Oxford English Dictionary is updated annually with new words that are added to the English language. In this year’s update a few more words from the technology world has been added to the dictionary (OED, 2011).
The latest words added in the March edition of the dictionary are as follows:

• OMG [OMG int. (and n.) and adj.]: ‘Oh my God’ (or sometimes ‘gosh’, ‘goodness’, etc.)

• LOL [LOL int. and n./2]: ‘laughing out loud’—are strongly associated with the language of electronic communications (email, texting, social networks, blogs, and so on).

They join other entries of this sort: IMHO (‘in my humble opinion’) [IMHO at I n./1], TMI (‘too much information’)  [TMI at T n.], and BFF (‘best friends forever’) [BFF at B n.], among others.

My interpretation of LOL had always been 'Lots of Love' until i discovered much later on facebook that it was about laughing :o)!
But, LOL even had a pre-tech life, starting in 1960, when the letters where short for ‘little old lady’.  And in 2009, the word “unfriend” was selected as word of the year. Unfriend is the verb used for deleting a friend on Facebook. (OED, 2011)

I wonder how long it will take for WTF?!

References:

OED, Oxford English Dictionary, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.oed.com

images: Google images

LOL Susi B :o)