The use of the abbreviation OMG, which was recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), dates back to 1917, when it was used in a personal letter. And LOL had a previous life, as principal editor Graeme Diamond explains on the dictionary’s website.
Many people would associate initialisms – abbreviations consisting of the initial letters of a name or expressions – such as OMG (‘Oh my God’) and LOL (‘laughing out loud’) with the digital age, so one would expect them to be used mostly by the younger generation.
The OED’s definition for LOL is: “Originally and chiefly in the language of electronic communications: ‘ha ha!’; used to draw attention to a joke or humorous statement, or to express amusement”, but it sometimes is also used as an abbreviation of ‘lots of love’.
As Mr Diamond writes, “As is often the case, OED’s research has revealed some unexpected historical perspectives.”
The dictionary’s first quotation for OMG is from a personal letter from 1917, while the letters LOL have also been used in various contexts for quite a while. The initialism was once used to denote an elderly woman (or ‘little old lady’); and the entry for FYI, for example, shows it originated in the language of memoranda in 1941.
It was J A F Fisher who made the first known use of OMG: “I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis – O.M.G. (Oh! My God!) – Shower it on the Admiralty!”
OMG, LOL and FYI join other entries of this sort in the Oxford English Dictionary: IMHO (‘in my humble opinion’), TMI (‘too much information’), and BFF (‘best friends forever’), among others.
Mr Diamond explains that initialisms are quicker to type than the full forms, and (in the case of text messages, or Twitter, for example) they help to say more in media where there is a limit to the number of characters one may use in a single message.
OMG and LOL are found outside of electronic contexts, however; in print, and even in spoken use, where there often seems to be a bit more than simple abbreviation going on.
The intention is usually to signal an informal, gossipy mode of expression, and perhaps parody the level of unreflective enthusiasm or overstatement that can sometimes appear in online discourse, while at the same time marking oneself as an ‘insider’ au fait with the forms of expression associated with the latest technology, explains Mr Diamond.
The OED Online’s latest release also contains another initialism – an acronym (initialisms which are pronounced as words rather than letter by letter) – which is less connected to online media, although it is certainly used on them.
Mr Diamond writes that ‘Wag’ is notable for the extremely fast journey from its introduction to the language to its use as usual English vocabulary.
It was only in 2002 that the Sunday Telegraph reported that the staff at the England footballers’ pre-World Cup training camp referred to the players’ partners collectively as ‘Wags’, from the initial letters of ‘wives and girlfriends’.
“The term then remained relatively dormant, except for a small and brief revival around the time of Euro 2004, before the 2006 World Cup in Germany saw an explosion of usage, as the women, including Victoria Beckham and Colleen McLoughlin (now Colleen Rooney), had a high profile of their own, and were a visible element (especially to the media) of the England team’s presence in their base, Baden-Baden.”
Debates raged in the newspapers about whether the women’s presence was ‘distracting’ the footballers, alongside an equal fascination with what they were buying and wearing.
“It is quite uncommon for new words to reach such a level of ubiquity in such a short time after their first appearance, and that the word Wag has done so perhaps demonstrates not so much its own inherent usefulness or catchiness as the influence that the print media, especially in its coverage of big stories such as the World Cup, can still have on the ways in which language is used, even in the age of social networking.”