An acronym is simply a new word formed by joining the initial letters of a series of words found in a descriptive sentence or even a single word
Common examples of everyday acronyms that you might already be familiar with are:
- North Atlantic Treaty Organization = NATO
- Thank God It's Friday = TGIF
- Absent Without Leave = AWOL
An acronym is really just a type of short hand abbreviation.
Note: The TeenChatDecoder is a "specialty database" that contains only acronyms, abbreviations, acronyms, and initialism and "lingo" commonly used by kids, teens and younger adults. We make no distinction between them in our database or on our site.
So, what are teen chat acronyms?
Chat acronyms are combinations of letters and numbers that stand for certain words or phrases used by teenagers when they chat online. For example:
- By the way = BTW
- Gotta go = G2G
- Rolling on floor laughing = ROFL
For a full list of teen chat acronyms, use our onlin acronyms dictionary.
Kids prefer using chat acronyms when chatting because it makes typing messages easier while juggling several chat sessions at once.
Remember, it's not uncommon for a teenager to maintain 3 - 10 instant messages sessions simultaneously! Using acronyms saves time because commonly used phrases that are abbreviated using only a few characters means less time typing per message.
You'll find teenagers (and some adults too) using chat acronyms with a variety of communication tools:
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Online chat rooms (hence the name "chat acronyms")
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Online forums / bulletin boards
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Instant messaging
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Social networking sites, like MySpace.com and LiveJournal.com
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Email messages
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Text messaging
The good news is that as a parent you don't have to remember all these different acronyms?" Because you can always visit our web site to look up the terms you want to decode.
Now, considering our database has thousands of teen chat acronyms we've found, and new ones are added everyday, there are really only 20 or so chat terms that parents should be familiarize themselves with at a glance.