YOLO
- 1Acronym of you only live once.
She signed up for the skydiving course on a whim, figuring YOLO.
They blew their savings on front-row concert tickets, all in the name of YOLO.
Note
Slang that can stand as a whole sentence. Tacked on as "because YOLO!" or "YOLO, right?", it excuses a reckless or faintly silly choice, often with a wink. It also works before a noun, as in Kevin Roose's "YOLO Economy" (2021) and "YOLO decisions". The acronym is recent, but Katherine Martin of Oxford University Press traces the phrase "you only live once" to the 19th century. It is a variant of "you only go around once."
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Origin
YOLO is an acronym for the phrase "you only live once," which itself dates back to the 19th century and grew in use from 1940 to 2000. According to lexicographer Ben Zimmer, the acronym first appeared in 1993 in a trademark for YOLO gear, and it was popularized around 2011 by Canadian rapper Drake before being added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2016.