9

I had look through the dictionary and found there are short form for “somebody” and “something”, which are “SB” and “sth”. However I couldn’t find a short form for “somewhere”. Is there a short form for “somewhere”?

Sophia Lau
  • 91
  • 1
  • 2
  • 9
    Those short forms are only used in dictionaries to save space. If you ever see a short form for "somewhere", it will be in a dictionary, and you'll recognize it. I don't know if I've ever seen one. – gotube Jul 26 '21 at 04:56
  • 4
    Short forms like this require context. For example, you said that "sth" means "something", which may be true, but it doesn't exclusively mean that. If you saw "nth, sth, est, wst", you'd assume that 'sth' stood for 'south' in that context. Following the pattern of your examples for 'somebody' and 'something', you'd expect that 'sw' would be short for 'somewhere', but 'sw' could also be short for 'software'. – Astralbee Jul 26 '21 at 08:31
  • 13
    You will see "sth" used online, but I have never seen it used by a native speaker. Avoid. – chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic- Jul 26 '21 at 15:20

1 Answers1

27

The abbreviations sb and sth are only used in dictionaries. They are never used in general writing.

Dictionaries need to save space. They use "sth" and "sb/sby" as a short way of writing these words which are frequently used in definitions.

open (sth): cause (sth) to open

As dictionaries move online, some are now not using these abbreviations.

But learners tend to use dictionaries more often than native speakers, and might think that "sth" and "sb" are in general use. They are not! You would not write:

Sb left a chocolate on my desk today!

Not even as a casual post on Twitter.

So unless you are writing a dictionary, don't use sby or sth. And don't use an abbreviation for somewhere.

James K
  • 217,650
  • 16
  • 258
  • 452
  • 7
    To give some numbers to frame the challenge of squeezing the English language into a book on paper, the complete Oxford English Dictionary is printed in twenty volumes and costs a small fortune. In microprint, with a magnifier and nine normal pages per single page, the OED has a compact version, at about a third the price of the twenty volume set, that fits in a single volume that weighs in at over 8kg (46x28cm, and over 9cm thick) and itself has over 2400 real pages (at nine print pages per page). Abbreviations were a necessary evil in the age of print and paper. – J... Jul 26 '21 at 14:16
  • 1
    "Not even as a casual post on Twitter." Let's be honest, online txt speak uses abbreviations like they're going out of style. I could totally see someone using sb or sth on Twitter, even if not very many people probably have. – nick012000 Jul 26 '21 at 16:05
  • 9
    @nick012000 It's like the difference between a sports coat with jeans vs a jean jacket with dress pants. It's not really clear why one should be acceptable and the other not, but somehow I have only seen "sth" used by non-native speakers, even in txt speak. I would expect "some1" before "sb". – user3067860 Jul 26 '21 at 16:15
  • 1
    @user3067860 - I suspect it's because the sb/sby/sth abbreviations don't really correlate to what the word actually is. They aren't initialisms, they don't sound like the word, and enough consonants are dropped that they don't even really correlate. Doesn't mean no one does it (and who knows how far the next generation of kids will take it), but it doesn't really fit with the patterns it has. – Bobson Jul 26 '21 at 16:47
  • 4
    @nick012000 Abbreviations aren't nearly as common as people seem to think they are; the use of abbreviations arose from the difficulty of typing on a cell phone number pad, and the proliferation of smartphones with full keyboards (even if virtual) has caused a strong shift in typing habits. It's actually a pretty fascinating case in linguistics. – Hearth Jul 26 '21 at 16:49
  • @Hearth Well, that and the 140 character limit on Twitter. I suspect when they doubled that to 280, it made such abbreviations less necessary... – Darrel Hoffman Jul 26 '21 at 17:25
  • 1
    @DarrelHoffman To my knowledge, even the character limit didn't cause people to use abbreviations nearly as much as the difficulty of typing on a flip phone did. But I've never used twitter, so I couldn't say for sure. – Hearth Jul 26 '21 at 17:26
  • 4
    @user3067860 or even "sum1", which I've seen from native speakers on Facebook, though luckily not often. – Chris H Jul 26 '21 at 18:17
  • @nick012000 You are, of course, right. I was being over dogmatic to make a point. I'm sure that sb has used those abbreviations on twitter. – James K Jul 26 '21 at 20:48
  • To further @Hearth's point, this xkcd comic from 2012: https://xkcd.com/1083/ – dbmag9 Jul 26 '21 at 21:13
  • I've definitely both seen and used smth for 'something' in abbreviated notes or lazy typing, along the same lines as writing w/ for 'with' or w/o for 'without'. – dbmag9 Jul 26 '21 at 21:16
  • 3
    I think it's a dialect thing. Whenever I see sth/sb used online, it's usually by a speaker of InE, not AmE or BrE. – shoover Jul 26 '21 at 22:01
  • @shoover It may be partially, but I've also seen it commonly from German and French acquaintances, so I suspect it's a little more widespread than that. – Hearth Jul 27 '21 at 13:53