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The word 'lol' (lower case) is now sometimes used in the English language. Should we spell its past tense as 'lolled' or 'loled'? And should it be 'lolling' or 'loling'?

Community
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  • related:http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/1819/past-participle-of-a-verb-created-from-an-acronym –  Dec 10 '14 at 16:33
  • Apparently licensed by Wiktionary. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 10 '14 at 23:02
  • @EdwinAshworth Licensed by Wicktionary LOL! :) (couldn't resist) – Araucaria - Him Dec 11 '14 at 00:19
  • I think it is LedOL. – Jake Regier Aug 07 '15 at 03:49
  • As a general rule (there are of course many exceptions), when you add "-ed" to a word ending in "el" or "ol" you insert an additional "l". This prevents the word from being confused with a similar word ending in "ele" or "ole". But "LOL" is an odd case, since it's not normally considered a "word" but rather an acronym, and is generally pronounced "ell oh ell", not "lowl" or some such. – Hot Licks Oct 31 '16 at 18:18

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Merriam-Webster doesn't mention a past tense use of the word 'lol'. I therefore don't think there's a rule on what the past tense of LOL is supposed to be like, or at least I was not able to find one. Also both the uppercase and the lowercase version can be used interchangeably.

This makes sense considering lol can either mean laughing out loud or laugh out loud.

In nearly a decade of playing online-games on a regular basis I have seen them all:

lold, lol'd, LOLed, loled, LOL'ed, lol'ed, lolled, loling, lolling, lolin.

I think it's mostly a matter of preference. However it seems like the most common variants of attempting at creating a past tense of lol are loled and lol'ed, at least according to Google search results.

J_LV
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The process of converting a noun into a verb is very common in English, and is called verbification or verbing.

As the beloved Mignon Fogarty explains:

The Chicago Manual of Style allows OD'd for overdosed, and the AP Stylebook recommends OK'd for okayed. [...] Make acronyms and initialisms past tense by adding an apostrophe and a d: OK'd. via

In the same way, it appears one can then turn said verb into a gerund, as cited in these example news headlines: 1, 2, 3

If I can find a resource that describes how to properly turn an initialism into a gerund, I will update this answer. - Atlantic

Atlantic
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