A Guide to Online Dating lingo

If you’ve been around the online dating community for a while or you may even be just starting out, you’ll have stumbled upon many new terms and phrases to add to your vocabulary, some of which may have left you a little confused. That’s why we’re here to crack the case of online dating lingo for you, so here are some terms to take note of:

Catfishing

This term has been around for a while, you may have even watched or heard of the American TV show ‘Catfish’. It’s when someone creates an online profile using someone else’s identity or they misrepresent themselves. They generally communicate online and will avoid meeting face to face or on video calls in order to maintain the facade.

Ghosting

This happens when someone you’ve been dating abruptly stops all communication with you, with no warning. Like a ‘ghost’ they just disappear into thin air and don’t respond to your messages with no explanation.

Bae

This term comes from the words ‘babe’ or ‘baby’. You might call someone ‘bae’ to refer to them as your significant other. Or you could even use it to say you like something, for example you could say “Food is bae” rather than “I love food”. 

Cuffing Season

Cuffing season refers to the cold winter months being a time where otherwise happy singles want to settle down and meet someone until the warmer weather comes back around. 

Meetcute

Simply this is your ‘How Mum met Dad’ kind of story. The adorable backstory of how your relationship blossomed into what it is now.

Sliding into DMs

This phrase refers to the subtle flirty act of messaging your crush on social media. DMs being the abbreviation of Direct Messages. 

Submarining

It’s a new one, but this refers to someone you were dating who ghosts you and then suddenly resurfaces with no apology or no explanation as if nothing happened – talk about a poor dating game.

Breadcrumbing

This is stringing someone along with flirty messages with no intention of taking things seriously or dating the other person. They give you just enough attention to give you hope for a future. 
Now you’re all caught up with the lingo you’ll be ready to take the online dating world by storm, head over to Plentymorefish.com to find fellow singles who are ready to mingle. 😉