LMAO

LMAO stands for “laughing my ass off.” It’s the bigger, louder cousin of LOL, used when something actually made you laugh.

What LMAO means in a text

Where lol has softened into a polite smile, lmao still carries some real laughter. Send it when a meme lands, when a friend tells a story that’s too good, or when someone roasts you and you have to admit they got you.

How you type it changes the volume. All caps, LMAO, reads as hysterical laughter. Lowercase lmao is calmer, and plenty of people now drop it at the end of a sentence the way they’d use lol, almost as a verbal shrug.

Examples

• “My dad just tried to FaceTime me with the camera pointed at the ceiling lmao.”
• “LMAO not you falling up the stairs in front of the whole class.”
• “I sent that to the wrong group chat lmao I’m moving countries.”

LMFAO, LMBO and other versions

• LMFAO adds an f-word for extra emphasis.
• LMBO swaps in “butt” for people who’d rather not swear.
• ROFLMAO means rolling on the floor laughing my ass off. It looks dated now.

Where LMAO came from

Nobody knows who typed it first. The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing already had an entry in 1996 defining it and noting it had been seen on CompuServe, so it was in use by the mid-1990s. The New Oxford American Dictionary added it in 2010 with a “vulgar slang” label, and the Oxford English Dictionary added both LMAO and LMFAO in 2016.

The initials got a second life as a band name: the electro-pop duo LMFAO, known for “Party Rock Anthem,” took theirs straight from the acronym.

Is LMAO rude?

The spelled-out phrase includes a mild swear word, so keep it out of work emails and messages to people you don’t know well. Among friends, nobody thinks twice about it.

Related terms

• LOL: laughing out loud, now often just a friendly tone marker.
• Dead: laughing so hard you can’t breathe.
• SMH: shaking my head, for when it’s funny but also embarrassing.

See more terms like this in our texting abbreviations guide.