The email that just arrived only says "FYI"? The restricted area is only for "VIPs"?! On Fridays, you stumble across "TGIF" on Instagram a dozen times ... In our everyday life we come across many abbreviations, which are often a short form of English terms or statements.
To help you understand some of the most important English abbreviations, we have compiled a list, which includes language commonly used by young people as well as important expressions from the business world.
Overview of the most important English abbreviations
AKA = Also Known As
ASAP = As Soon As Possible
ATTN = For The Attention Of
B2B = Business To Business
B2C = Business To Consumer
BFF = Best Friends Forever
BTW = By The Way
DIY = Do It Yourself
FAQ = Frequently Asked Questions
FR = For Real
FYI = For Your Information
IDK = I Don't Know
ILY = I Love You
IJS = I'm Just Saying
IMHO = In My Humble Opinion
K = Okay
LOL = Laughing Out Loud
OMG = Oh My God
OOO = Out Of Office or Out Of Order
RSVP = Please Reply (from French: Répondez s'il vous plaît)
SMH = Shaking My Head
TBA = To Be Announced
TBC = To Be Continued
TBD = To Be Defined
TGIF = Thank God It's Friday
TMI = Too Much Information
TTYL = Talk To You Later
TWSS = That's What She Said
U = You
VIP = Very Important Person
WBU = What About You?
WYD = What You Doing?
WYSIWYG = What You See Is What You Get
Y = Why?
Of course this is not an exhaustive list and if you are interested in learning more about the subject, please visit the Abbreviations.com website, which has well over 100,000 different English abbreviations in its databases.
First letter vs. wording
Quite often words are not abbreviated using only their first letter, as we see in the above list, and individual letters can stand for identical words or parts of words. Examples are c u = see you, or r u = are you. The word "to" can be represented by the number "2" and "for" by the number "4".
Combinations of these are also common, for example:
CUL8R = See You Later