


If you are a film buff, you probably know that POV means "point of view." In filmography, point-of-view shots refer to a scene in which the camera takes on its character's perspective. Sitting at an estimated 73,000 searches per month is the acronym POV. It is recognized as an international abbreviation for distress. Many mistakenly believed it stood for "save our souls" or "save our ship," but in reality, the letters don't stand for anything. SOS has been used since 1905 as a Morse code sequence. The next most searched abbreviation is SOS, with 79,000 monthly searches in the United States and 106,000 globally.

For example, you might see someone tweet "SMH at the state of the world" after reading some bad news. SMH stands for "shaking my head" and expresses disbelief, disappointment, or frustration. With an estimated 148,000 searches per month in the United States and 282,000 globally, SMH is one of the most confusing initialisms far and wide. We've organized them from the most to the least confusing. The results consist of acronyms and initialisms. Here are ten of the most searched-for abbreviations from social media and what they mean. Most of us know standard abbreviations such as ASAP (as soon as possible), but things can quickly become confusing when faced with the more recent and Internet-specific ones.

Experts from the Wealth of Geeks network analyzed the Google search data for the phrase "What does … mean" to discover the most common social media abbreviations Americans wish were more defined. While some abbreviations are specific to certain social media platforms or groups of people, others have become more mainstream and are used across the Internet. Thanks to the significant amount of time children and young adults spend posting messages to social networks and chatting online, a new language or "lingo" has emerged that does not adhere to Standard Written English, according to the Journal of Literacy Research.įormally known as digitalk, the "lingo" consists of many acronyms and abbreviations, which act as a shorthand way of communicating with our friends or members of our social media circle. In recent years, the biggest factor has been social media - leaving even native English speakers dumbfounded by the intricacies of their native tongue.Īs of April, 59% of the world's population, were social media users.
