People are only just realising what RSVP stands for – and they can’t believe how wrong they got it
WE see the term RSVP on every party, wedding and event invite we receive – but do we actually know what it means?
Plenty of us couldn’t be further off the mark.
Many people have spent years thinking it means “respond soon via post” or “response solicited very promptly”.
But it turns out we need to brush up on our language skills.
People are flocking to social media to get to the bottom of the widely-used acronym, and some of their responses are hilarious.
Cosmetic brand Art Natural shared a short video on Tik Tok posing the question “what does RSVP stand for?” to people in its office.
Many couldn’t even make it past deciding whether the “R” stood for respond or reserve.
People in the comments went as far as to think it stood for “reservation for very important person”.
Other guesses were “respond soon via phone” or “respond soon via post”, as well as “respond soon for party” and “reserve soon very promptly”.
One commenter quipped: “I seriously always thought it was, ‘respond soon via post’.”
Another shockingly suggested it means: “Reserve special vehicle parking please.”
But two people in the video posted on the @artnaturals profile were closer to the mark in thinking the acronym is derived from the French language.
RSVP is actually a shortened version of the French phrase, “répondez s’il vous plaît”.
Translated to English, this simply means, “please reply”.
Despite it’s four letter composition, the acronymy isn’t as complicated as it seems after all.
In French, “répondez” is the word for respond and “s’il vous plaît” means “if you please” – which it is shortened to just mean please.
Luckily, we don’t need to understand French to let our friends know we want to go to their wedding – but at least now we can understand exactly what their invite says.
People have also only just realised what AM and PM stand for.
The time related acronyms are actually short for “ante meridiem” and “post meridiem”.
These are Latin and they translate to “before midday” and “after midday”.