What Does TvT Mean In Texting? (Answered!)

TvT in texting most commonly is used to represent a crying emoji face, the Ts being the crying eyes and the V being the nose. It’s one of the less common emojis but this is what the term normally means. It does also have a couple of gaming meanings, such as “team versus team”.

Though it’s not the most commonly used emoji, this is by far the most common meaning of typing TvT while texting.

Any other meanings it does have will likely be quite simple to work out from context.

Perhaps it’s an underappreciated emoji face, but this is definitely what it usually means.

Let’s find out more.

In This Article

What does TVT stand for in texting?

Most often, TVT doesn’t stand for anything in texting in the sense of being an acronym or initialism for several words.

Rather, it’s more often meant to represent a crying face.

It might most often be spelled out as TvT, to give the appearance of two crying eyes at either side of a nose.

It’s probably easier to see why people use it this way now! “I can’t believe I can’t go out tonight TvT” for example.

As I’ve said, this far from the most common way of making a crying face using an emoji.

Obviously, nowadays, with Apple and Android emojis, we can just select from premade ones to express virtually any emotion!

Even without these, though, the prevailingly most common way to type out a crying face was: :’(.

These sideways emojis tended to be far more popular, using brackets and special characters rather than letters.

Nonetheless, there were countless other forms of virtually every kind of emoji.

Whether it was simply changing the special characters from 🙂 to =], or changing it entirely to letters so that it was the right way up.

This is, by far, the most likely meaning of TvT in texting. It’s meant to show that you are very sad, so sad that you might cry or are literally crying.

As I mentioned, it can have a couple of other meanings, but these are highly context-specific and not likely to be used in a conversation where you aren’t already expecting to hear them.

I’ll get into these terms later, but the strongest likelihood is someone is trying to express sadness if they use this emoji.

The other thing to consider is that it could be serious but it could also be meant jokingly. “My favourite TV show has been cancelled TvT” for example.

So, where did this come from?

Where did TvT come from?

The precise origin of this emoji is not entirely known.

The early internet, and early texting culture, was a hotbed for new terms and functions of language like this.

It’s always astronomically harder to get the proper feeling across in a text message than it is in talking to someone face to face.

This is why emojis and emoticons first started being used.

It was a way to stop messages from sounding too distant or impersonal, and just to accompany them with the broad range of emotion that speech entails.

“TvT” specifically seems to have arisen quite early, and was in use in texting slang and online chatrooms by the end of the 1990s.

Even then it was not the most commonly used emoji, but it was being used to some degree.

This kind of shorthand is also just preferable for texting, especially back when everyone was typing on an alphanumeric keyboard.

It seems quite natural, then, with this in mind, that this sort of language would evolve for texting.

Again, though, when precisely this particular emoji came into use is not known—and perhaps never will be!

What does TVT mean on social media?

So, does this term mean anything different on social media? Generally, the answer is no.

Especially if you see it spelled out this way: “TvT”, then it is almost definitely meant to mean a crying emoji.

Even now in modern social media, there’s a certain disposition to hark back to an older time in the internet and texting.

Spelling out emojis like this, rather than using the designed ones that most applications have now, is a way of doing that.

Indeed, certain emojis are even still associated with certain groups of people, such as “xD” and indeed “TvT” being in part associated with emo culture.

What else does TVT mean?

TvT is most commonly used as an emoji, then, but it does have one or two other meanings.

As I mentioned, there are a couple of gaming terms which TVT can relate to.

It can mean “team versus team”, which is a gaming term in online games meant to distinguish team-based game modes from single player, free-for-all game modes. “Do you want to play some TVT tonight?” for example.

It can also mean “true vital trauma”, which is again a rather specific gaming term.

So, in the right contexts, this may be what is meant by “TVT”.

TVT is a bit of an odd one, then.

There are so many ways that people have used characters to make different faces for use in online chatrooms that it can be difficult to keep track of all of them.

This one is obscure among the obscure, so you’d be forgiven for not understanding what it meant.

While it could mean a gaming term, this is not half as likely.

More in Texting Meanings

Founder - @PollyWebster

Polly Webster is the founder of Foreign Lingo and a seasoned traveler with a decade of exploration under her belt.

Over the past 10 years, she has journeyed to numerous countries around the globe, immersing herself in diverse cultures, traditions, and languages.

Drawing from her rich experiences, Polly now writes insightful articles about travel, languages, traditions, and cultures, sharing her unique perspectives and invaluable tips with her readers.

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