Laughing Out Loud

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What Does Laughing Out Loud Mean?

Laughing out loud (LOL) is a brief expression to signify amusement in chat and online conversations. With the advent of the Internet, many short slang terms and acronyms came into existence because of ease of use and to facilitate faster typing speed. LOL is no longer just a part of chat messages and SMS; it is now widely used commonly in daily spoken conversations.

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Techopedia Explains Laughing Out Loud

Laughing out loud is the most commonly used expression over the Internet. LOL originated after the common use of the World Wide Web when the use of shorthand slang became common in informal chat messages and conversations. The term LOL is so commonly used now that it no longer necessarily means that the user is actually laughing out loud when typing it, simply that the user is amused. The term is no longer restricted to chat conversations or text messaging, but is also commonly used by some people in their everyday language along with other Internet slang.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects 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 by 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 helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.