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The viral phrase \u2018OMG\u2019 has a much longer history than you might think\u2026 first being recorded on 9th September, 1917, in a letter from Lord John Fisher, a 75-year-old retired admiral, to Winston Churchill.\xa0\nFisher used it sarcastically, riffing on the idea of a new order of knighthood; playing off the similar-sounding "OM," the Order of Merit, which he himself had received. While his pun was witty, the abbreviation didn\u2019t catch on at the time, and the acronym stayed buried in history until the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) uncovered it decades later, whilst preparing their 2011 edition.\n\nIn this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly explain how OMG resurfaced in 1994, in a soap opera message board; delve into a potted history of abbreviations, from Queen Victoria\u2019s shorthand to Twitter; and reveal the meaning of another of Lord Fisher\u2019s favourite phrases - "Buggin's Turn"\u2026\xa0\n\nFurther Reading:\n\u2022 \u2018The First Use of OMG Was in a 1917 Letter to Winston Churchill\u2019 (Smithsonian Magazine, 2012): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-first-use-of-omg-was-in-a-1917-letter-to-winston-churchill-145636383/\n\u2022 \u2018OMG: The creator of the abbreviation 'would have loved emojis'\u2019 (BBC News, 2020): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-54893939\n\u2022 \u2018The Curious Origins of Popular Sayings\u2019 (Hochelaga, 2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlin1W-qThs\n\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices