998: Conjugating Initialisms Sep 2, 2017

Generally, an affix like '-ness' or '-ing' can be attached to any word so long as it is the suitable part of speech, though in English there is a great deal of fluidity between nouns, verbs, and adjectives anyway. With this in mind, one can observe the way that people will—subconsciously or otherwise—consider utterances as certain parts of speech. The initialism 'LOL' ('laugh out loud') for example first started in text-messaging but has since made its way into the lexicon of many people. One would say "I laughed out loud" when using the past-tense by conjugating the verb 'laugh'. However, when using the word 'lol', in order to indicate that it is in the past-tense, one would not say "I L-ed OL" but instead would say or write "I LOLed" which is sometimes found as "LOL'd" thereby treating the whole initialism, or acronym depending upon the speaker, as if it were its own verb. Since English is so tolerant to this type of change, new words like 'LOL' can and do develop very quickly.