New to Reddit? Confused by the lingo? Here’s a helpful guide that’ll help you understand all the most popular Reddit slang and acronyms
Reddit is a great place for information junkies. Whatever your interests, regardless of how niche they are, I can guarantee you there will be a subreddit about it.
Being one of the most popular web apps on the planet, Reddit has hundreds of millions of daily users that upload terabytes of content every day.
But some of the terms, words, slang and abbreviations used on Reddit can be a little confusing; the platform kind of has its own language, based on acronyms, that, to the uninitiated, might be tricky to understand.
Kind of like phrases like XOXO or SMH, but just specific to Reddit.
And that is where this guide comes into play. Below are all the most-used acronyms and slang terms used on Reddit. As you’ll see, once you understand the meaning behind them, most of them make quite a bit of sense.
Reddit Slang & Acronym Explained: A Reddit Lingo Glossary
- AMA – Ask Me Anything. This is also an actual subreddit too. Plenty of famous people have done Reddit AMAs, including Barack Obama, Gordon Ramsey, and a whole loads of others as well. You can check out the full list here.
- AMAA – This means Ask Me Almost Anything. If you do something interesting for a living, or have a strange experience you want to share with people, you could title a post with AMAA: I Saw A UFO, for instance.
- Crosspost – A Crosspost on Reddit is when a post is taken from one subreddit and added to another. For instance, say you have a new review for an album. That review could then be crossposted to another subreddit that is focussed on that particular style of music. Crossposting is good for growing your community and followers.
- DAE – This means Does Anyone Else and it is usually used to ask a question, like: DAE Think Amazon Prime is Better Than Netflix?
- ELI5 – Explain like I’m 5 years old; this is a quick way of asking someone to explain something technical to you in an easy to understand manner. For instance, you could ask ELI5 VPNs – What Are They?
- FTA – This means From The Article and it is usually used when a user is summarising or taking a quote from an article and using it in a comment or a post.
- FTFY – If you make a mistake in your post, either a typo or a factual error, a mod by edit it and add FTFY which means Fixed That For You
- IMO – “In My Opinion”; pretty self explanatory.
- IMHO – The acronym IMHO means “In My Humble (Honest) Opinion” and is usually used when commenting on something – a new product, a service, an experience with a company and/or person, or a political belief.
- IIRC – This is shorthand for If I Recall Correctly .
- ITT – If you want to reference something that has already been post in a subreddit thread, you can use ITT to mean ”In This Thread”.
- MIC – Simple enough, this means More In Comments.
- NSFW – This one is important. It means NOT SAFE FOR WORK and is usually used on posts that have adult content in them. It basically means, if you’re at work, probably don’t open it.
- NSFL – One step above NSFW, is NSFL which means Not Suitable For Life. This type of post is usually really offensive or gross – usually a bit of both.
- OP – When you start a brand new thread on a subreddit, and it starts a conversation with lots of comments, the other commenters will refer to you as OP which means Original Poster.
- RTFA – This one is quite common, it means Read The F***ing Article.
- TIL – Another handy acronym, this one means Today, I Learned…
- TL;DR – Sometimes an OP will post a wall of text that no one wants to read. It might be interesting but it looks horrible. For this reason, commenters in the thread might ask for a TL;DR which means Too Long; Didn’t Read.
- WIP – This is a handy one to use, it means Work in Progress and can be used on a post that you’re going to edit and build up over a couple of days. You can also use it to highlight a new project that you’ve started and want some feedback on. Example: Here’s My New WIP Android App – Any Feedback Welcomed!
