HWP & GL Meaning on Craigslist Personals
You have probably been seeing the “GL” and the “HWP” among other abbreviations while chatting on dating sites and other social media platforms. If you have struggled to understand what it means, then you are not alone. Many people don’t know what they mean or how and when they can use them while chatting.
Generally, these two abbreviations are majorly used in social sites and personal adverts, by social media users to describe the physical qualities of the advert. The origin and the meaning of these two abbreviations are discussed below.
The meaning of “GL.”
In the social media space, “GL” means “Good Looking.” “GL” is an old way of chatting, for as far back as the days when the only place you could run your adverts were in magazines and newspapers, where advertisers are charged based on word count of the advert.
So, advertisers would use acronyms and abbreviations in a bid to minimize their word count, as an acronym or an abbreviation would be counted as a single word. That is why abbreviations are preferably used, and they’ll only be charged for a word instead of writing out the words and being charged for the number of its word count.
The Meaning of “HWP”
“HWP” means “Height Weight Proportional.” This abbreviation is generally used on social sites like Tinder, Craigslist, Zoosk, Match, and so on and also in personal adverts. It is usually used instead of mentioning body sizes. For instance, when someone says, “he’s 5 feet and 10 inches tall and HWP”, a knowledgeable social media user (more notably, teenagers and adults) would understand that it means that the person is slightly huge but not overweight.
Mysteriously, most dating sites still stick to the use of abbreviations that have been attested to and made use of from the time when magazines and newspapers are the only platforms for placing adverts. Such abbreviations give details about a specific number range and, at the same time, are charged as one word.
Moreover, “HWP” is widely considered as a personal trait, and when used, it should be used in a predicative adjectival form. What this means is that it should always come after the object being described when used in a sentence.
Also, please note that you can only pronounce “HWP” by each initial because it is an initialism abbreviation, unlike acronyms. Initialism abbreviation is different from acronyms, acronyms can be pronounced together like a single word, but initialism abbreviation has to be pronounced separately by each initial. In times past, before the digital world took over, words like “average build” would be used, but this has two-word counts, compared to “HWP,” which is just a word count.
Conclusion – HWP Meaning
Personal adverts are useful elements in the social media space. They are predominantly used on dating sites and other social media sites. They have been in use and are still in use until this day, although, technology may have changed the way adverts are presented, many of them still hold the meaning and attributes they originally have.
Moreover, these abbreviations still have the same meaning as of old times, although the importance of using abbreviations has greatly reduced. The reason for abbreviations in old times is to save money, but today, they are just used to save time used to type and also to maintain the way it is practiced in old times, especially in this digital era.
