Study Reveals Most Popular American Texting Habits

April 21, 2025 @ 8:37 am · Filed by under Abbreviation, Acronyms, Slang, Tests

« previous post | next post »

[This is a guest post by Randoh Sallihall]

Analysis of Google search data for 2025 reveals the most searched for texting abbreviations in America.

Study reveals most searched for text abbreviations in America:

  1. FAFO (254 000 searches) – F–k around and find out.
  2. SMH (166 000 searches) – Shake my head.
  3. PMO (101 000 searches) – Put me on.
  4. OTP (95 000 searches) – One true pairing.
  5. TBH (93 000 searches) – To be honest.
  6. ATP (85 000 searches) – At this point.
  7. TS (79 000 searches) – Talk soon.
  8. WYF (76 000 searches) – Where are you from.
  9. NFS (75 000 searches) – New friends.

  1. ASL (65 000 searches) – As hell.
  2. POV (63 000 searches) – Point of view.
  3. WYLL (59 000 searches) – What you look like.
  4. FS (58 000 searches) – For sure.
  5. FML (56 000 searches) – F–k my life.
  6. DW (55 000 searches) – Don't worry.
  7. HMU (54 000 searches) – Hit me up.
  8. ISO (53 000 searches) – In search of.
  9. WSG (50 000 searches) – What's good?
  10. IMO (48 000 searches)- In my opinion.
  11. MK (45 000 searches) – Mmm, okay.
  12. ETA (40 000 searches) – Estimated time of arrival.
  13. ICL (37 000 searches) – I Can't Lie.
  14. MB (37 000 searches) – My bad.
  15. STG (29 000 searches) – Swear to god.
  16. ION (28 000 searches) – In other media.
  17. PFP (27 000 searches) – Picture for proof.
  18. NTM (27000 searches) – Nothing much.
  19. DTM (26 000 searches) – Doing too much.
  20. TTM (26 000 searches)- Talk to me.
  21. MBN (25 000 searches) – Must be nice.
  22. ETC (24 000 searches) – And the rest.
  23. BTW (23 000 searches) – By the way.
  24. WFH (21 000 searches) – Work from home.
  25. GMFU (20 000 searches) – Got me f—-d up.
  26. NGL (19000 searches) – Not gonna lie.
  27. SYBAU (19 000 searches) – Shut your b—h ass up.
  28. BTA (17 000 searches) – But then again.
  29. SB (17 000 searches) – Somebody.
  30. HBD (16 000 searches) – Happy Birthday.
  31. PMG (15 000 searches) – Oh my god.
  32. HY (15 000 searches) – Hell yeah.
  33. TMB (11 000 searches) – Text me back.
  34. WYS (10 000 searches) – Whatever you say.
  35. GNG (9 000 searches)- Gang (close friends or family).
  36. IKTR (8 000 searches) – I know that's right.
  37. IKR (7 000 searches) – I know, right?
  38. ARD (6 000 searches) – Alright.
  39. IFG (5 500 searches) – I f—–g guess.
  40. HN (4 000 searches) – Hell no.
  41. TTH (3 000 searches) – Trying too hard.

A spokesperson for Unscramblerer.com commented on the findings: "Text abbreviations are the secret language of the internet. You could even call them an integral part of social media culture. Snappy, always changing and hard to understand. Texting abbreviations is all about saving time and appearing cool. Keeping up to date with the newest trending abbreviations is no easy task. Old meanings can change while new abbreviations are created. A recent study found that abbreviations might not be as cool as people think. Using abbreviations makes the sender seem less sincere. This also leads to lower engagement and shorter responses. There is nothing wrong with using abbreviations in casual conversations with friends and family. However it is best do draw a line for professional conversations. Context matters."

Research was conducted by word finding experts at Unscramblerer.com.

We analyzed 01.01.2025 -05.03.2025 search data from Google Trends for terms related to text abbreviations.

Methodology: We used Google Trends to discover the top trending text abbreviations and Ahrefs to find the number of searches. Americas most popular text abbreviations can be discovered in Google Trends through the keyword variations of 'meaning text'. Abbreviations are used most often on social media and texting. The 2025 top trending abbreviations are the least understood. People have to search for their meaning (example 'TBH meaning text'). Ahrefs shows many variations of meaning searches like 'text meaning' or 'means in text'(example 'PMO meaning in text') and similar keyword combinations(example 'what does SMH mean in text'). We added up 100 search variations of top text abbreviations.

[VHM:  Some of this text slang (e.g., IDK ["I don't know"]) even seeps onto Language Log from time to time.]

 

Selected readings

April 21, 2025 @ 8:37 am · Filed by under Abbreviation, Acronyms, Slang, Tests


33 Comments »

  1. Victor Mair said,

    April 21, 2025 @ 8:38 am

    Texting abbreviations and slang that are so common few people would feel the need to look them up (e.g., LOL, LMAO, ROTFL) naturally would not appear on this list.

  2. Victor Mair said,

    April 21, 2025 @ 8:56 am

    How can "PMG" stand for "Oh my god"?

    I'm not thinking of "Wǒ de tiān a 我的天啊", which is the Mandarin translational equivalent of "Oh my god".

    I often hear Chinese say — out loud — the letters "O M G!"

    And they also say "ōmàigà 喔麥尬!"

  3. Robert Coren said,

    April 21, 2025 @ 9:21 am

    I note that "ETA" for "estimated time of arrival" has been standard in the transportation industry for a long time (like, before the Internet), and also that I've seen the abbreviation frequently on Facebook with the meaning "edited to add".

  4. Ryan said,

    April 21, 2025 @ 9:32 am

    I wonder whether, with OMG being maybe the most common of these, PMG is such a frequent typo that it pops up both when people make a typo in their initial text and when the person searching makes that typo.

    The closely related OMFG doesn't show up here because many consider it sacrilege, inappropriate to use. A common substitution is to use the term "the Tetragrammaton".

  5. cameron said,

    April 21, 2025 @ 9:35 am

    "PMG" is a jocular pseudo-typo. swapping p for o is a joke. see "pwned"

  6. Ross Presser said,

    April 21, 2025 @ 9:49 am

    ASL *used* to mean "Age/Sex/Location", going back to the days of AOL chat rooms it was common to demand this info of new people joining the chat. I have never seen ASL used to signify "As Hell".

  7. Patrick LaFontaine said,

    April 21, 2025 @ 11:45 am

    Smh. I agree with Victor that "Most Searched" =/= "Most Popular". I personally only use 2 of the top 10 tbh.

    "Texting abbreviations is all about saving time and appearing cool." … "A recent study found that abbreviations might not be as cool as people think" – This surprised me, given that I usually find these casual abbreviations to be emotive in a way that the full text is not (I think there is a strong difference between "lol" versus "laugh out loud").

  8. Barbara Phillips Long said,

    April 21, 2025 @ 12:13 pm

    SMH, #2, is usually “shaking my head” in the glosses I have seen. It isn’t a command to others, it is an action the writer is taking.

    DTM, #28, surprised me. I would have assumed it meant “diump the motherf*cker” in the Dan Savage tradition, not the innocuous and mundane “doing too much.”

    The actual Dan Savage coinage is DTMFA, which means “dump the motherf*cker already”:

    https://www.thestranger.com/savage-love/2018/02/20/25837088/savage-love-letter-of-the-day-dtmfa-dtmfa-dtmfa

  9. Xtifr said,

    April 21, 2025 @ 1:52 pm

    I think the most surprising entry to me is ETC. Which I don't think I've ever seen in all-caps. But it's almost certainly the oldest on the list. And commonly used on LL as well.

  10. Vulcan with a Mullet said,

    April 21, 2025 @ 3:33 pm

    Interesting! American here, 55. Of the first 10, I recognize and use most of them but I have never used or seen TL (usually I use TTYL instead "Talk To You Later) or ATP.
    Also, OTP is locally (in the Atlanta area where I live) used more commonly for "Outside The Perimeter" (that is, living outside the circular loop that defines "Atlanta" proper from its outer suburbs. This usage predates Internet texting though :)

  11. julian said,

    April 21, 2025 @ 6:38 pm

    Lots of juicy TLAs there.

  12. Norman Smith said,

    April 21, 2025 @ 8:07 pm

    Well, today I learned that "SMH" means "Shake my head"! I thought it meant "So much hate". This really changes the meaning of a bunch of messages I've seen. For the better.

  13. AntC said,

    April 21, 2025 @ 10:16 pm

    This really changes the meaning of a bunch of messages I've seen.

    Does anybody still use LOL for Lots of Love? Is there a reason txt abbreviations couldn't be homographs, resolved by context, just as proper language?

  14. Chas Belov said,

    April 22, 2025 @ 2:52 am

    I tend to use few abbreviations when texting, maybe lol, which probably marks me as hopelessly out of date. I recognized only 12 of the 50. Surprised FTW wasn't on there; took me a long time till I realized the F wasn't the F-word.

  15. Olaf Zimmermann said,

    April 22, 2025 @ 2:52 am

    Quoth @AntC "Does anybody still use LOL for Lots of Love?"
    We once had a Prime Minister who did. He also gave us the Brexit referendum (gotta watch my blood pressure).

  16. Philip Taylor said,

    April 22, 2025 @ 3:13 am

    (I thought I asked this before, but can find no trace of my question today) — What letters do the dashes represent in "36. SYBAU – Shut your b—h ass up." ?

  17. Victor Mair said,

    April 22, 2025 @ 5:57 am

    @Philip Taylor

    I had the same question as you.

  18. Robert Coren said,

    April 22, 2025 @ 9:01 am

    @Victor & @Philip, re #36: I'd guess the word is "bitch".

  19. Olaf Zimmermann said,

    April 22, 2025 @ 9:51 am

    @VHM:
    My first reaction was in Eliza Doolittle mode, i.e. "Move you're bloomin' arse", except that the 'eitch at the end made little sense. Enter Wiktionary – I think we're dealing with an antipodeanism here.

  20. Philip Taylor said,

    April 22, 2025 @ 1:25 pm

    Well, certainly (and sadly) the unbowdlerised version is attested, Robert, as a Google search clearly demonstrates, so it would seem that your suggestion is almost certainly correct. But to Olaf — oh for the good old days, when "bloomin’" was still a part of everyday vocabulary. One of my two maternal uncles always said "ruddy", which with the benefit of hindsight I now look back on with affection. Sadly those days are now past (for most of us, at least) and I routinely use some variant of the F-word (or worse) when shouting at something I have just heard on Radio 4 …

  21. Ethan said,

    April 22, 2025 @ 6:20 pm

    I believe "PMO" meaning "piss[es/ing] me off" is much more common than "put me on". Since January (this year) the phrase "ts pmo" ("this shit pisses me off") became very popular on Discord (various online blogs say it is also very popular on Twitter and TikTok).

  22. Robert Coren said,

    April 23, 2025 @ 11:27 am

    I don't use these things regularly, but I recognize a lot of them (and some not). I'm surprised not to see some that I'm familiar with: AFAIK (as far as I know) and AFAICT (as far as I can tell), both of which I have used in contexts where they are/were common; introductory TIL (today I learned) and TFW (that feeling when), plus stand-alone FML (my life). Maybe they're all so common and well-understood that nobody searches for them.

  23. John Schiavo said,

    April 23, 2025 @ 12:21 pm

    Did LOL ever really mean "lots of love?" I know that's how my boomer mother used it, but I had always assumed she was conveniently misunderstanding "laugh out loud" because she wasn't aware of its true meaning.

  24. amy said,

    April 23, 2025 @ 8:56 pm

    OTP, ATP, and ISO all have very different existing meanings to me: one time password, airline transport pilot, and a disk image.

  25. Philip Taylor said,

    April 24, 2025 @ 5:50 am

    With "one-time password" I would agree, Amy, but "ATP" is unknown to me and ISO (for me, at least) means "International Standards Organisation" (from which your "disk image" comes, there being an ISO standard for disk images).

  26. Gokul Madhavan said,

    April 24, 2025 @ 8:29 am

    For me, “ATP” is either “Association of Tennis Professionals” or “adenosine triphosphate”. “OTP” is “one-time passcode/password”, now ubiquitous in India for mobile-based verification of literally everything.

  27. Philip Taylor said,

    April 24, 2025 @ 8:59 am

    “OTP” is “one-time passcode/password”, now ubiquitous in India for mobile-based verification of literally everything — oh dear. In that case, I had better never visit India — 2FA is the bane of my life (I want to authenticate using my computer, for *****’s sake — if I wanted to authenticate using a telephone, I would not be using a computer in the first place), and I genuinely wish it had never been invented.

  28. Miggy A. said,

    April 24, 2025 @ 4:56 pm

    Abbreviations can also change in meaning from generation to generation.

    For example "ts "means "this shit" to anyone under 30, and not "talk soon"

  29. Andreas Johansson said,

    April 25, 2025 @ 2:51 am

    I was surprised at how many are new to me, and how many ones I thought common are not on the list. I guess I 'd not realized the extent to which I've lost contact with the txt speak world.

    (It's mildly fascinating that one can lose contact with the txt speak world while doing as much messaging as I do.)

  30. Gokul Madhavan said,

    April 25, 2025 @ 5:28 am

    @Philip Taylor: Mobile phones are ubiquitous in Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities in India; computers, nowhere near as common. The costermonger who pushes his cart up and down our street everyday has two mobile phones and no computer. He carries no cash with him, as everybody pays him by scanning a QR code. The rest of the technology he uses is at least a hundred years old (and, who knows, may in fact be a hundred years old!): a simple mass balance with old metal weights, and a cart that would not have been out of place in my grandfather’s childhood village when he was being taught to say “George V is our Emperor”.

  31. Philip Taylor said,

    April 25, 2025 @ 6:54 am

    Wow, another world indeed, Gokul. Thank you very much for the insights into a very different way of life.

  32. Barbara Phillips Long said,

    April 26, 2025 @ 8:35 am

    ION, #25, is said to be “in other media.” I would have expected it to be signaling a topic change, as in “in other news.” Saying ION is “in other media” makes me think the writer wants to switch from texting to video. The word media encompasses meanings the word news does not, and vice versa.

  33. Robert Coren said,

    April 27, 2025 @ 4:53 pm

    @Barbara Phillips Long: not to mention that "ION" cannot stand for "on other media".

RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI

Leave a Comment