YOLO

YOLO stands for “you only live once.” People say it to justify doing something bold, impulsive or a little reckless.

What YOLO means

Merriam-Webster defines it as an expression used to say you should do things that are risky or fun because you only get one life. Oxford Dictionaries once called it a 21st-century version of “carpe diem.” In practice it ranges from genuinely brave (moving abroad on a whim) to plainly unwise (a third plate at the buffet).

Most people now use it with irony. Saying “YOLO” before something mildly daring, like ordering the spiciest thing on the menu, is a joke about how dramatic the word once sounded.

Examples

• “Booked a one-way ticket to Tokyo. YOLO.”
• “Dyed my hair blue the night before my job interview. Yolo, I guess.”
• “He said YOLO and jumped in the lake in March.”

Where YOLO came from

The idea is ancient, but the acronym is recent. Before it was a catchphrase, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and Caryl Orbach had named their ranch YOLO by the mid-1990s, and in March 2004 Adam Mesh launched a YOLO clothing line. The first Urban Dictionary definition followed that April.

What made it huge was Drake’s song “The Motto,” featuring Lil Wayne, released in November 2011. Within months YOLO was everywhere, and so was the backlash: in 2012, Wikipedia notes, the Washington Post was already calling it an acronym people loved to hate, and Drake jokingly apologized for it on Saturday Night Live in 2014. Oxford Dictionaries added it to its online dictionary that August.

Did Drake trademark YOLO?

No. According to Wikipedia, a Florida restaurant registered YOLO as a trademark for frozen yogurt in 2012, after applying in 2010, and that registration was canceled in 2018. Drake reportedly sought royalties for the phrase in late 2012, but he never owned the trademark.

Related terms

• Full send: going all in, no hesitation.
• FOMO: fear of missing out.
• Side quest: an unplanned detour.
• Main character: living like the star of your story.

See more terms like this in our Gen Z slang guide.