What Does LMAO means?

Have you heard LMAO many times and still wonder what exactly it means? Are you pondering how you can also use this popular acronym to stay with the trend? Don’t worry, this post will answer all your doubts.

Basically, LMAO is social media’s favorite acronym which stands for “laughing my ass off”. You might find this word in the comments section of social media platforms, in instant text messaging, and in chats. It is often used to express a ‘feeling of laughter’ after seeing some funny stuff. The acronym is Universal and is used by everyone, no matter which language they speak.

In today’s time, people hate writing long paragraphs or lines and they like to keep it short. The social media users cut short the words in a way that is easier and quicker to write. The same goes for LMAO- it’s the easiest and quickest way to show how funny the content is rather than writing long sentences like “This is so funny” or “It made me laugh a lot.”

LMAO was first used by the early adopters of online communication at the beginning of the 1990s. LMAO is a casual word for social media platforms and instant messaging and should not be used for any formal work. According to grammarians, LMAO is both an interjection and a verb as it conveys emotion and also describes an action.

There are many other acronyms which are can be used in place of LMAO to express laughter:

ROFL – ROFL stands for Rolling on the floor laughing
LOL – LOL stands for Laughing out Loud
LQTM – LQTM stands for laughing quietly to myself
HAHA – It’s a loose interpretation of laughing sound.
LMHO – laughing my head off
LSMH – laughing & shaking my head

History of LMAO

In the online world, ‘lmao’ came to use by the beginning of the 1990s, but some writers and intellectuals think its roots are way old. A few years back, a Spanish speaker posted the question under the subject head “laughing one’s butt off” on WordReference.com. He posted:

I think I know the meaning of this expression, but I’m not sure so could you please help me confirm it?

To this Greenie replied with a comprehensive answer that we have been using our body parts as verbs since ages, around the 1840s. Greenie gave the example of Charles Dickens’s letter to his friend Thomas Mitton where he had written: “I have made a great many erasures and mistakes in this short space, but I have nearly written my head off this morning and am dismally stupid.”

Here the Dickens used the word Head as a verb.

She further goes on giving the example of Norman Mailer’s 1940s creation, The Naked and the Dead, in which the character named Roy says the following lines, while he was stood up by a woman: “The goddam bitch, none of them can fool me, they all put out for the right guy, but they just don’t gimme a chance, the cards are stacked against me, it’s the goddam breaks I just never get them. I work my ass off at the club, and what does it get me? Here the author used the phrase “ass off”

All the above information indicates that using body parts like ass, head as a word in conversation is quite an old format.

How to Pronounce?

LMAO is easier to pronounce, just read each letter of the acronym separately, saying “el-em-ay-oh”. Quite often people pronounce it as “luh-may-oh”. Both the pronunciations are correct.

LMAO is considered inappropriate to use informal meetings and documents as it contains the “Ass”. However, most of people don’t find it offensive as it is an acronym and doesn’t explicitly spell out any words. So, different readers can interpret it differently according to their level of understanding.

How to write LMAO?

LMAO can be written in capital letters as well as in lower case letters. There is no fixed rule for writing it. LMAO, lmao, Lmao all three are equally acceptable, the only thing to keep in mind is that whatever form you choose, stick to that form for the rest of your text.

Alternate Meaning of LMAO

Being an acronym, LMAO represents more than one thing. Widely it has been used in response to something very funny, but there are some other interesting meanings of LMAO. Some of these are similar to the common meaning while others are entirely different.

Leave me alone, okay
Laughing my arms off
Let’s make an oath
Lick me all over!
Let’s meet at the office.

Other than this, people on Tumblr use the phrase “ayy lmao” which is used to refer to Aliens. Also, it is believed that Ayy lmao is a phrase uttered by aliens and its meaning is also not known by humans.

How to use LMAO?

Different people can use LMAO in different ways in conversation. People can use it either at the starting of a sentence or at the end of the sentence for eg: