AOLbonics

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Blend of AOL +‎ Ebonics, since the Internet service provider AOL was often regarded as having a high proportion of barely literate Internet users.

Noun

AOLbonics (uncountable)

  1. (Internet slang, rare, somewhat dated) The practice of speaking using numbers, or using short phonetic spellings as a shorthand to save on keystrokes.
    • 1997 October 15, White Tornado 1, “I blew 3rd gear today!!!!!!”, in rec.autos.makers.ford.mustang[1] (Usenet):
      Sorry, I didn't mean to be so harsh with you last post. I didn't realize that you were posting from AOL. Let me translate to something that an AOLer would understand. Uuuh, da DSmZ areN;t br0king wh'n dey R' st00k. it's duh fazt 0nez. This has been a production of AOLbonics.
    • 2001 July 5, JMH, “reception kisses”, in alt.wedding[2] (Usenet):
      Absolutely not! I refuse to cater to the lowest common denominator in my online speech. No AOLbonics for me. Besides, it's kinda fun to read all the personality traits I am alleged to have based on someone else's interpretation of my posts. It's almost like getting your palm read by a traveling gypsy!
    • 2004 April 22, StarChaser Tyger, “The Voices In My Head”, in alt.fan.cecil-adams[3] (Usenet):
      I'm not sure. I don't have the song to hand...the lyrics I found are more in favor of 'But if you're bored, then you're boring'...at least one of them is in AOLbonics, 'if ur bored then ur boring', too...
    • 2006 May 18, Drakazz, “Embedding the entire HTML within PHP”, in alt.php[4] (Usenet):
      Could you not use AOLbonics like "u", "r" or "ur" etc., because they are not any kind of English language and are not understandable or might be considered as disrespect to other users because you're too lazy to write "you" and "are" at these people - is that the case maybe?:(

Usage notes

  • For example, Hey evry1, how r u?

Anagrams