jargon

In the old days of newspaper classified advertising when you had to pay by the word many singles used acronyms when they ran adverts in the “personals” columns. The Internet has removed many of these space and costs restrictions but some of these terms still persist and we’ve compiled a list below of the most common ones. If you come across one you’re not sure of or you think we’ve missed an important one out then why not drop us a line.

BB: Body-builder
BBW: Big Beautiful Woman (Overweight)
BF: Black Female, or Boy Friend
Bi: Bisexual
BiF: Bisexual Female
BiM: Bisexual Male
DTE: Down-to-earth
DWF: Divorced White Female
DWM: Divorced White Male
GBM: Gay Black Male
GF: Gay Female (Lesbian), or Girl Friend
GSOH: Good sense of humour
GWF: Gay White Female
GWM: Gay White Male
IRL: In Real Life: face to face meeting
ISO: In Search Of
LTR: Long Term Relationship
M4M: Man seeking man
M4W: Man seeking woman
NS: Non-Smoking
NSA: No Strings Attached
SBF: Single Black Female
SBM: Single Black Male
SWF: Single White Female
SWM: Single White Male
TLC: Tender Loving Care
W4M: Woman seeking man
W4W: Woman seeking woman
WLTM: Would Like To Meet

In addition e-mail. Instant messaging and text messages have spawned a new language all of their own and you may well come across some of the below list:

AKA: Also known as
AFK: Away from keyboard
BAK: Back at keyboard
BRB: Be right back
BTW: By the way
CUL: See you later
EOM: End Of Message
FAQ : Frequently Asked Questions
FWIW: For what’s its worth
FYA: For your amusement
FYI : For your information
GMTA: Great minds think alike
HHOK: Ha ha, only kidding
IAC: In any case
IMO: In my opinion
IMHO: In my humble (or honest) opinion
IMNSHO: In my not-so-humble opinion
IOW: In other words
LOL: Laughing out loud
NRN: No response necessary
OTOH: On the other hand
POV: Point of view
RL: Real life
ROFL: Rolling on the floor laughing
RSN: Real soon now
TIA: Thanks in advance
TIC: Tongue in check
TTFN: Ta-ta for now
TYL: Talk to you later
WB: Welcome back
WTG: Way to go

So as you can see, from the above gobbledegook, dating online can be a very confusing business but with Date Doctors as your guides you’ll soon be fluent in the language of love!