FOMO

Texting & Internet Slang abbreviation · Texting and Chat

FOMO
Stands forFear of missing out
CategoriesTexting & Internet Slang

FOMO stands for Fear of missing out, a texting and chat abbreviation.

Anxiety that others are having rewarding experiences without you, often triggered by social media posts of parties, trips and events. Used seriously in psychology and marketing and playfully in everyday speech.

Example: Everyone's at the festival and I'm home sick, the fomo is real.

Usage notes

Marketing strategist Patrick McGinnis is credited with popularizing the term in a 2004 op-ed in The Harbus, the Harvard Business School student newspaper, and Oxford Dictionaries added it in 2013. Its opposite, JOMO, celebrates the joy of missing out. Pronounced as a word, FOH-moh, and acceptable in casual work conversation.

More texting and chat abbreviations

  • CYT – See you tomorrow
  • DGAF – Don't give a f***
  • DW – Don't worry
  • F2F – Face to face
  • FFS – For f***'s sake
  • FML – F*** my life
  • FTL – For the loss
  • FTR – For the record
  • FTW – For the win
  • FWIW – For what it's worth
  • G2G – Got to go
  • GC – Group chat

See all 215 texting and chat abbreviations →

Edited by the AbbreviationList.com team. Spotted an error or a missing meaning? Contact us.