IRL

PluralIRLs, irls

1. 1
   adverbinitialism

   Initialism of in real life.

   After three years of trading messages, the two writers finally met IRL at a book festival.

   He's much shyer IRL than his confident posts suggest.

   Note

   Born as internet slang, the adverb usually closes its clause, after a verb of meeting or being: met IRL, meeting IRL. Offline and in the flesh are close synonyms. The full phrase in real life can simply mean "in reality". The initialism keeps the sharper contrast with being online. Joanna Walsh plays on exactly that contrast in Grow a Pair (2015), with a palace that has no Wi-Fi.

2. 2
   adjective

   Existing or taking place in real life, as distinct from online.

   The forum organized its first IRL meetup at a coffee shop downtown.

   Many streamers keep their IRL identities separate from their online personas.

   Similarin-person, offline, real-life, face-to-face

   Oppositeonline, virtual

   Note

   Moved in front of a noun, the letters become a label for things that exist off the screen: an IRL girlfriend, an IRL controversy. It works well for something that began online and then crossed over. Food & Wine (foodandwine.com) in 2021 calls Chipotle's soap "now IRL" because it started as an Instagram joke. Like most labels of its kind, it has no comparative or superlative.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A real-life friend; a person known in person rather than only online.

   Most of his IRLs have no idea he runs a popular channel.

   It's rare for an IRL to show up in my online friend group.

   Note

   Internet slang has clipped the phrase "IRL friend" down to its modifier, so the letters alone now name the person. It counts and pluralizes like an ordinary noun: one IRL, several IRLs. It is used mostly by people whose social lives run on two tracks, sorting the friends they know in person from the friends they know only online.

4. 4
   proper nouninitialism

   Initialism of Indy Racing League.

   Several top teams eventually left CART to race in the IRL.

   The IRL made the Indianapolis 500 the centerpiece of its schedule.

   Note

   A motor-racing name that behaves like any league title: it takes the article, so teams race in the IRL. Its Indy is the informal short name for Indianapolis, home of the 500 at the heart of the schedule. The same three letters also belong to the internet's "in real life", with no shared history. A sports page and a chat thread rarely leave any doubt about which one is meant.

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