xswl
Dying of laughter
xswl！I’m dying!
xswl is short for 笑死我了, “it makes me laugh to death”. People type it under anything very funny, the way English speakers type “I’m dead” or “LMAO”.
- Took off
- 2018
- Started in
- Fan circles on Weibo
- Today
- Now everyday Chinese
What it means
The letters are the pinyin initials of xiào sǐ wǒ le: 笑, “to laugh”, 死, “to death”, 我, “me”, and 了. It is a written reaction, typed alone or after a short comment.
It belongs to a set of pinyin-initial shortcuts, such as dbq for 对不起, “sorry”, yyds and awsl.
How people use it
It is still common in comments on Weibo, Douyin and Bilibili. The full 笑死我了 and the short 笑死 are the spoken forms; xswl is the typed one.
我刚才在地铁上睡着了，坐过了五站
I fell asleep on the subway and missed five stops.xswl，你现在在哪里？
LOL, where are you now?不知道，好像到郊区了
No idea. I think I’m in the suburbs.别急，我帮你查一下
Don’t panic, I’ll look it up for you.
More examples
你的猫怎么在洗衣机上睡着了，xswl。
Why is your cat asleep on the washing machine? I’m dying.
xswl，我爸把面膜贴反了。
LOL, my dad put his face mask on upside down.
For the word itself and how to reply to it, see xswl in the slang dictionary.
Where it came from
It spread in fan circles around 2018. In May 2018 the tech site ifanr asked whether 笑死我了 really needed to become xswl. In October 2018, China Youth Daily reported on young people who write in pinyin initials and quoted one telling a friend in a group chat 你连dbq都不知道，xswl! (“You don’t even know dbq? LOL!”).
The same report says fans like such shortcuts partly because outsiders cannot read them.
Related memes
Sources
- The Paper, reprinting China Youth Daily, October 2018 (in Chinese) (thepaper.cn)
- ifanr, May 2018 (in Chinese) (ifanr.com)
Checked November 2026. The picture at the top is our own drawing of 灯灯. It is not the original meme image.
Ten Chinese memes
One Chinese internet meme every three days for a month: where it came from, what it means and how to use it.
