OOO

What it means

OOO stands for 'out of office.' It marks that someone is away from work — on holiday, sick, or otherwise unavailable — and usually appears in an automatic email reply or a status. The triple-O is also the name people give to that auto-reply itself.

Words like “OOO” are exactly the kind of vocabulary our English vocabulary size test measures — find out how many English words you know.

Examples

• I'll be OOO next week, so reach out to my colleague.
• Sorry for the slow reply — I was OOO on Friday.
• Let me set my OOO before the holidays.
• She's OOO until the 15th.

Where it comes from

An office initialism that exploded with email auto-responders. 'Setting an OOO' has become shorthand for the whole away-message ritual.

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