I'm confused. Does the abbreviation "LOL" stand for

Lots Of Laughs

or

Laughed Out Loud

???

or even

[fill in the blank, get creative]

laugh out loud

Lots of luck, lots of loving. lascivious obscene lechery, leave off lying, limp old log,

i tend to side with Dr Bill on this.. LOL, is ambiguous.. what it means, depends on the forum and the user and lots of other factors.

we have played tweedledee and tweedledum (Re: the alice in wonderland quote about words meaning what we want them to mean), and even the best writer, can sometimes be misunderstood, but terms like LOL are very fluid.

we have repeated discussions about the term YART, (is it unique to this board?) i don't know, but i know here it is used to mean "Yet Another Rehashed Thread" (or is it topic?)

and there is it... confusion!

this is not a chat room, so we have some time to compose our comments, and generally eschew the stupid chat room shorthand of b4, 2bad, and other garbage. we are much more inclined to creative ways to express our reactions to funny bit.

not that there is any objection to using LOL, or ROTFLMAO
(rolling on the floor, laughing my ass off!) and YART. YART is, i think objected to, not because of it being shorthand, but rather, because it sometimes seems as if people who are posting here, are telling others, boring, been there, done that to death already. it is that sense of possible rudeness that limits its use.

We have rehashed old topics, (and gone off onto new tangents!) and we have called YART. (not to be rude, but because the topic is still to fresh in many of the regulars minds, and since old topics can be found with a search, others can read all about it.)

it might be interesting, if you frequent chat rooms to find out what others think LOL stands for (actually, it might even be a worthwhile subject for someone doing work in Modern English usage. I don't think we have the time (and i know i don't have the inclination) to conduct a study about the use and meaning. but since someone thought researching pop vs. soda was, i look forward to disertations on the meaning of such short hand.. and wonder what regional factors will influence the meaning.. does it mean the same in UK as in NZ or US? and what about area on the cusp, like Canada? do canadian use shorthand like UK residents or like US?
(speaking of which, do canadian have beeper (US) or bleepers (UK)? i like bleepers better, since bleeper is assocaited in US with (explitive deleted!) but i think its almost a moot point, since who has beepers/bleepers anymore anyway? every one is celular now!)

I think that if you used LOL in a chat for something other than "laugh out loud", it would be confusing. you would get lots of "wtf"'s and "?"'s. I am not a worldly chat traveler, but in the one that I do frequent, which is international, LOL is definitely laugh out loud.

How about for other uses other than chat? I've come up with a few that link with certain occupations:

Gambling - Luck's Out, Love
Culinary (of the seafood type) - Left Over Lobster
Health farms - Low Obeseity Level

My brain's not quite in gear today, but I'm sure fellow AWADers can come up with better!

Confusion shared. I thought LOL meant lots o' luck, usually sarcastic, for a long time, until the contexts became too inappropriate to permit that assumption. These days it's almost always for laughing-etc. Could be that the meaning is shifting over the last year or two. What an unheard-of phenomenon in languages..stay flexible!

Confusion shared. I thought LOL meant lots o' luck

And while I know of the laugh out loud version, I regularly sign off emails LOL for lots of love. P'raps I shall have to use a disclaimer on my use of LOL from now on! LOL!!!