The 6 Best Ways to Say “LOL” in Spanish

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It’s hard to imagine now, but back in the day we didn’t have calls and texts bundled into our phone packages. We had to pay for every individual message we sent.

Imagine paying 10 cents per tweet or whatsapp you fired out! That’s pretty much what we had to do.

Because space was at a premium (you didn’t want to go over your character count and pay to send 2 messages!), we started to shorten certain words and phrases. A shorthand for the millennial age!

A lot of these acronyms and initialisms are still in frequent use. From ‘IDK’ to ‘TL;DR’ we see these shortened forms all across the internet. Perhaps the most common is LOL.

If you’ve ever wanted to Laugh Out Loud at something your Spanish speaking friends have said, but weren’t sure how, keep reading.

 

How do you say LOL in Spanish?

There are many ways to say LOL in Spanish, and people will choose their personal favourites to use. The most common are ‘jejeje’, ‘ajajaj’, ‘XD’, ‘ahre’, ‘¡q risa!’ and even ‘LOL.’

 

1. LOL 

Ironically, one of the most common ways to say ‘LOL’ in Spanish is ‘LOL’.

Because English-speaking culture is so prolific online, a lot of meme vocabulary stays the same. So if you use LOL with a Spanish speaking friend, they’ll understand exactly what you mean.

Be careful, though, because LOL is very colloquial and isn’t really accepted as a ‘real’ Spanish term. So it’s probably not one you’d want to use to laugh at your boss’ jokes.

Example:

 

 

2. Jejeje

Like the English ‘haha’ or ‘hehe’ (because a j is like an /h/ sound in Spanish) this is an onomatopoeia for the sound of laughter.

Jejeje is probably the most common way to express ‘LOL’ and will be understood by everyone throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

The nice thing about ‘jejeje’ is you can increase the number of times you write ‘je’ depending on how funny the joke is. So if your crush tells you a bad joke, but you want to make it look like you appreciated it, you can say ‘jejejejejejejejejejeje’!

Example:

 

3. Ajajaj

For all intents and purposes, this is the same as ‘jejeje’ as it is the phonetic sound of someone laughing. People generally decide on their own preference between the two.

Example:

 

 

4. XD

Before emojis were a thing, we used letters to draw pictures in our texts. In the case of XD, the X is two closed eyes and the D is an open mouth, so it’s a picture of someone laughing very hard.

On the whole, XD isn’t used like this in English these days. But it’s still very widely used in Spanish.

If you would like some background information on using XD as an emoticon, check out our article on The Full Meaning of the Expression “XD”.

Example:

 

 

5. Ahre

Very common in Argentinian and Uruguayan Spanish, ‘ahre’ is used to show that you have said something ironically or jokingly.

Unlike the other terms we’ve seen in this article, you’re only going to use it at the end of one of your own messages, rather than in response to someone else.

Example:

 
According to the ‘Academia Argentina del Letras’, the word is a combination of ‘ah!’ and the intensifying adjective ‘re’.There is an article (in Spanish) available here for more information. 

 

6. ¡Q risa!

Perhaps the most Spanish sounding on this list, ‘¡q risa!’ is short for ‘¡qué risa!’ which means ‘how funny!’

This isn’t as abbreviated as any of the other forms, because you’re still using the whole word ‘risa’ and the exclamation point.  

It’s very common online to abbreviate ‘qué’ as ‘q’ so watch out for that while you’re online! 

Example:

 

 

LOL meaning ‘Lots of Love’

When the internet was new, and LOL became a common abbreviation, it had two different meanings.

The one that has stayed around is ‘Laugh Out Loud’ but some people used it to mean ‘Lots Of Love’.

If you want to express that in Spanish, we can use ‘¡besos!’ which means ‘kisses!’ or the more literal ‘mucho amor’.

So now you have six different ways to respond to your Spanish speaking friends’ jokes (and you can tell them you love them!)

While you might be tempted to stick with LOL because it’s easy to remember, challenge yourself to use the others and see how impressed your friends are!