What Does SMH Mean When Texting?

SMH simply stands for shaking my head, and it’s used to express disapproval, disbelief, frustration, and resignation regarding a situation or something someone said or done.

People are often in a hurry when texting, especially if you are talking to a person under 30 years. To help speed up the communication, they use a variety of abbreviations to represent longer phrases. One such abbreviation is SMH, which stands for Shaking My Head or Shake My Head.

This digital initialism is a response to somebody else’s behavior or words, an event that took place, or the state of a particular situation. It is used to express disapproval, disbelief, disappointment, or resignation.
The response usually comes as a result of wanting to respond to something, but you have no words to do so. In real life, the only appropriate response to that situation would be shaking your head, hence the expression.

How is SMH Used?

You will most likely see SMH used in text or social media messages between friends or in a group chat. For example, one girlfriend will say, “I know he beats me sometimes but he loves me”.

Another person will reply in frustration or resignation with “SMH”, simply because they don’t know what to say anymore.
However, SMH is also used on social media hashtags on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat. For example, someone can post on their Twitter handle, “Spilled my morning tea singing and dancing in my car #smh ”
Sometimes, SMH is followed or replaced by a facepalm emoji (a person pressing a hand against their forehead in frustration). Both are used to express frustration, resignation, and disbelief to some else's words, behavior, or situation.

If the situation is more annoying than frustrating, people use a stronger version of the acronym. For example, SMH can mean Stupid Minded People or So Much Hate. There is also a variation of the expression, SMDH which means Shaking My Damn Head.

Origin of SMH

Though it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where SMH came from or who came up with it, the acronym was added to the Urban Dictionary in 2004. This is around the same time the facepalm emoji was added too, and their meaning was quite similar. Over the years, the two have made their way into common vernacular and found a home in memes, GIFs, and social media communication. SMH popularity hit its peak in June 2011 before the facepalm emoji took over due to the increasing use of emojis and GIFs instead of words.

When to Use SMH

There aren’t many rules against using SMH in communication. However, you should probably only use it in the right context to express disbelief, disgust, shock, and disappointment when you are otherwise speechless. Sometimes, people use it in reaction to a stupid joke where laughing is not an option.
It will also help if the person you are addressing can understand its meaning, otherwise, the communication will only be one way.

Grammatically, there are no rules. You can throw it at the beginning, the middle or the center of a sentence. You can even use the word on its own if you want. If you still don’t understand situations where you can correctly use the acronym SMH, type it on social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook to see some examples.

#SMH

#ShakingMyHead