Acronyms dictionary
dwu
or DWU [dee duh-buh l-yoo yoo]
What does dwu mean?
DWU is an internet acronym for “don’t wait up,” which literally means “don’t stay awake waiting for someone to arrive or make contact.” Don’t wait up is also casually used to mean “don’t worry about me.”
Where does dwu come from?
In the 2000s, people began to shorten don’t wait up to DWU in texts and social media. DWU is first listed as an acronym for don’t wait up in a 2007 Urban Dictionary entry.
The exact phrase don’t wait up (as an instruction for someone not to delay sleep until another person arrives home) appears in stories in both The London Magazine and Ambition: A Journal of Inspiration in 1913. The verb phrase wait up appears as early as 1801 in a record of the proceedings of the British House of Lords. A man is described as instructing his servants “not to wait up for him,” because he “had a key to let himself in by.”
Don’t Wait Up was also used as the title of a British sitcom from 1983–1990. It has since been the title of at least three different songs: one by Colin Hay in 2001, one by the Twang in 2007, and one by Robert DeLong in 2015. And then, in 2015, the Dutch R&B singer Aster Fekre also released a song titled “DWU (Don’t Wait Up).”
Examples of dwu
Who uses dwu?
Don’t wait up is common in informal speech and writing, while the acronym DWU is common in digital communication. Both phrases are often used as a playful alert that the person is going to be out late partying.
It’s not to be confused with another internet slang initialism: dwu for “dat’s what’s up.”
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of dwu like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of dwu that will help our users expand their word mastery.