Shaking My Head

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What Does Shaking My Head Mean?

Shaking my head, commonly abbreviated as SMH, is a type of chat and Internet slang for user expression. It often effectively signals someone’s disappointment or disgust for something, or other similar negative emotional reactions.

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Techopedia Explains Shaking My Head

Like other typical acronyms, SMH developed from user patterns where the keyboards, touch screens and interfaces of the devices led people to try to type things more quickly and take a lot of lexical shortcuts. Using the contraction SMH, someone can effectively express their emotions through text messaging or other venues in just three letters, as opposed to 13 letters and two spaces.

Although SMH is often used for specific reactions, such as a reaction to behavior perceived to be stupid, there is some ambiguity in the use of this abbreviation. SMH can be used to signal disgust for stupid behavior, or just general disappointment for hostile or aggressive behavior on the Internet. SMH is one of those expressions that can be used in many ways by the many millions of users who utilize chat or Internet slang on social media, in chat rooms, and text messaging for mobile devices and elsewhere.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.