initialism🔤 abbreviation
IRL
in real life
What it means
IRL stands for 'in real life' — the offline, physical world, as opposed to online or in a game. People use it to distinguish their real identity or experiences from their internet ones, as in meeting an online friend IRL.
Words like “IRL” are exactly the kind of vocabulary our English vocabulary size test measures — find out how many English words you know.
Examples
- We've chatted for years but never met IRL.
- Her IRL job is totally different from her channel.
- That trend is everywhere online but rare IRL.
- Let's hang out IRL sometime.
Where it comes from
An internet initialism from gaming and chat culture, drawing a line between online personas and offline life.
Related abbreviations
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