Your Ultimate Cheat Sheet to Deciphering the 123 Most Common Business Acronyms

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Ever feel like your co-workers—or, worse, your boss—are speaking to you in a different language? No, I’m not talking about your team suddenly deciding to conduct a meeting entirely in French. I’m talking about what often seems to be the language of the business world: acronyms.

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While some of us have the guts to ask for clarification when we have no idea what’s being said, others of us cringe at the thought of asking potentially “stupid” questions. Well, to everyone in the latter group: Today’s your lucky day. We’ve rounded up abbreviations for the most commonly used terms that you’re likely to run into at work (or more likely, in an email).

Better yet, they’re categorized by department, so you can prep before a meeting with your finance, technical, or marketing teams. (And because we’re pretty sure that, regardless of your role, you don’t want to be the only one who nods with a confused smile when there’s a RFD because the CTR for your website decreased and a QA test is required by EOD.)

General

  1. BID: Break it down
  2. COB: Close of business
  3. EOD: End of day
  4. EOM: End of message OR end of month
  5. EOT: End of thread
  6. EOW: End of week
  7. ETA: Estimated time of arrival
  8. FTE: Full-time employee
  9. FWIW: For what it’s worth
  10. IAM: In a meeting
  11. IMO: In my opinion
  12. KISS: Keep it simple stupid
  13. LET: Leaving early today
  14. LMK: Let me know
  15. MoM: Month over month
  16. MTD: Month to date
  17. NIM: No internal message
  18. OOO: Out of office
  19. OT: Off topic
  20. OTP: On the phone
  21. PA: Performance appraisal
  22. POC: Point of contact
  23. PTE: Part-time employee
  24. PTO: Paid time off
  25. NRN: No reply necessary
  26. NSFW: Not safe for work
  27. NWR: Not work related
  28. Re: Referring to
  29. RFD: Request for discussion
  30. SMART: Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound
  31. SME: Subject matter expert
  32. TED: Tell me, explain to me, describe to me
  33. TL;DR: Too long, didn’t read
  34. TLTR: Too long to read
  35. TOS: Terms of service
  36. TYT: Take your time
  37. WFH: Work from home
  38. WIIFM: What’s in it for me
  39. WOM: Word of mouth
  40. YTD: Year to date

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