There was an article by James Morgan at BBC News on April 8, 2011 titled Why did LOL infiltrate the language? As shown above, the acronym LOL sands for Laughing Out Loud. The article also included:
“OMG! LOL’s in the OED. LMAO!”
which means:
Oh My God! LOL is in the Oxford English Dictionary. Laughing My Ass Off!
(There also is an escalation to LMFAO). One of the problems with acronyms is that you need to be very sure of the meaning before you use them. The article mentioned a mother who thought LOL instead meant Lots of Love and wrote in a message that:
“Your grandmother has just passed away. LOL.”
At Wikipedia there is a List of U.S. Air Force acronyms and expressions which says the acronym PING means Person In Need (of) Graduation - a derisive term for a student. But when I arrived for tech school at Sheppard Air Force Base in 1972 it instead meant someone even lower, just a prospective student. They were considered a Person In Need (of) Guidance, one who just had arrived that week and was waiting to start classes next Monday. PING supposedly also described the sound which you would hear if you hit a prospective student on the side of their empty head.
The photo is wrong
ReplyDeleteBut that's NOT a photo - it's a PowerPoint cartoon!
ReplyDelete