What Does W Mean In Texting? (Answered!) - Foreign Lingo (2024)

W means “win” in texting. It is a very common slang phrase in texting and online to mean something positive has happened. In texting it becomes not a verb but a noun, e.g. “this is a w”. it can have other meanings, but this is overwhelmingly the most common meaning.

W is quite a simple one to get to grips with, then. If someone says something is “a W”, they are saying it’s a positive, it’s a good thing.

There’s really not much more to it than that. It’s become more common than ever today, so let’s find out more.

What does W stand for in texting?

Most commonly, W in texting stands for “win”.

There are a huge variety of contexts in which you might describe something as a W.

It’s meant to mean that something is a positive, something is very good, you’ve either had exceptionally good fortune or you’ve brought about your own happiness consciously.

There’s a pretty wide spectrum of positive things that can be a W, though—pretty much anything from eating a nice bag of potato chips to getting married. “Jessica and I have gotten engaged!”

“Wow, that’s a big W” for example.

Of course, here, it might not be quite appropriate depending on the friendship—it’s slightly ironic and may come across at best lacking impact and at worse a little insincere.

So, it’s more commonly used in less dramatic ways. “I’ve got the next two weeks off work now.”

“That’s a W,” for example.

As I say, it really is a very versatile slang term with wide application!

There’s a common parlance on certain internet circles like Twitter about how “online” a person is.

This is simply to do with the more time they spend online, and the more knowledge they have of things covered in social media.

Whether or not it is appropriate to tell someone that a major life event is a “W” probably depends on how online they are—if they’re not very online, they probably won’t know what you mean and could take it the wrong way!

There are other things that W can mean, but I’ll get into that later.

The simple test to look out for, as I said, is whether it seems like a noun or not.

Look for the articles either “the” or “a”.

These tell you a word is a noun, and will give you a good idea if someone means “win” or not.

Where did this come from then?

Where did W come from in texting?

We don’t know for definite where this term came from.

It does seem to be rather old and having even been in use long before texting started.

However, it’s also quite clear that recent usage on social media has revived its use as “win”, and this is the great bulk of the reason that it’s used today.

Gimmick Twitter accounts such as “Men posting their Ws” are common, and feature simply people posting about good things happening to them.

However, we can, as I say, see that it’s been in use for a long while. In 1983, a quote from a Massachusetts yearbook uses the phrase “get the W,” W here meaning win.

It is probable that this slang transferred to texting in the earliest days of mobile phones with text messaging, then, in the 1990s.

When everyone was typing on an alphanumeric keyboard, we were all looking for ways to shorten the tedious process of typing everything out.

Most of this slang tended to transfer to the online world, too, even though computers had full keyboards.

This is what most likely happened with W, then, although it was never nearly as common as things like LOL.

It didn’t really emerge into the popular consciousness for decades.

What does W mean on social media?

On social media, W definitely means win in the vast majority of cases.

This is really where the term has been so massively popularized. I mentioned gimmick accounts and other things popularizing the use.

Things proliferate so quickly now that it is not at all surprising how much W has taken hold.

“Just got my test results back and I passed, big W for me,” for example.

If anything, this meaning has transferred back to texting, rather than the other way around.

It can, of course, mean other things, so let’s consider other potential meanings.

What else does W mean?

The most likely other meaning for W is “with”.

It’s often typed out as “w/”, which is a shorthand form of “with”.

“I can’t come tonight, I have to go for a meal w/ my family,” for example.

This, too, is very often used on social media, especially sites like Twitter with strict character limits. It’s just a way of saving a few characters.

It can be spelled this way without the forward slash, so you may have to work this one out from context.

Remember, if it means “win” then it’s used as a noun, so there will probably be “the” or “a” before it!

While it can mean other things, then, the most likely meaning of a W sitting on its own in a text is “win”.

There are many things which can be a W in this way, as we’ve seen, so it’s natural that it’s become such a widely used term.

Texting and social media love a snappy abbreviation, and this is exactly what they get with W.

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