LOL isn't funny anymore

Ten years ago (we'll soon get to why it would only be back then) the proper answer to this would have been LOL -- "laughing out loud" -- because in reality, texting is sprouting new grammar all the time. Yes, grammar, as subtle and sophisticated as subjunctives and such, CNN informed.

Take LOL. Today, it wouldn't signify amusement the way it did when it first caught on. Jocelyn texts "where have you been?" and Annabelle texts back "LOL at the library studying for two hours."

How funny is that, really? Or an exchange such as "LOL theres only one slice left" / "don't deprive me LOL" -- text exchanges often drip with these LOL's the way normal writing drips with commas. Let's face it -- no mentally composed human being spend his or her entire life immersed in ceaseless hilarity. The LOLs must mean something else.

They do. They signal basic empathy between texters. What began as signifying laughter morphed into easing tension and creating a sense of equality.

That is, "LOL" no longer "means" anything. Rather, it "does something" -- conveying an attitude -- just as the ending "-ed" doesn't "mean" anything but conveys past tense. LOL is, of all things, grammar.

Of course, no texter thinks about that consciously. But then most of communication operates below the radar, where things tend not to mean what they would literally. Over time, the meaning of a word or an expression drifts. "Meat" used to mean any kind of food. "Silly" used to mean, believe it or not, blessed.

We can see LOL-type expressions happening in speech.

"I know, right?" means little; it assures the listener of agreement and acknowledgment. Or, there is the phrase "You know what I'm sayin'?" used most in what is best known as "Ebonics," but increasingly by young people of various shades and demographics.

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