OMG! Here's a fun fact you'll relate to

Chances are, when talking to friends, family, or co-workers via text or IM (or, perhaps even in person), you've used abbreviations for common phrases like "LOL" (short for laughing out loud) and BRB (an acronym for be right back).

Now, I asked you where OMG -- short for "Oh my God" originated, what would you say?

Perhaps you may point to the internet chatrooms that became popular in the 1990s through services like America Online. If you were born in the 2000s, you might guess it started with texting or email.

Actually, you'd have to go back further -- to the first half of the 20th century, that is.

Indeed, "OMG" dates back to World War I.

The first known use of OMG to abbreviate "oh my God" appears in a letter from Lord John Fisher to Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955:

"I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis -- O.M.G. (Oh! My God!) -- Shower it on the Admiralty!!!"

It’s thought that Fisher had become acclimated to writing in code, and that’s why he used OMG. Notice how the abbreviation is even followed in the letter by an explanation of the meaning, which makes clear exactly what he was intending to say.

So the next time you scream "OMG!" in surprise or shock to your partner in person, or type it in response to a friend's Facebook comment or text, remember that it's been in usage since well before you were born.

Who would have thought that the acronym wasn't conceived by a millennial in an AOL chatroom?

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