Word.ws English Dictionary

FOMO

UK/ˈfəʊməʊ//ˈfoʊmoʊ/

FOMO is the acronym of fear of missing out.

Meaning of fear of missing out

Noun

fear of missing out (uncountable)

  1. A form of social anxiety characterized by compulsive concern that one might be missing opportunities for social interaction, novel experiences, profitable investments, or other favorable things.
    Synonyms:
    FOMO

Verb

FOMO (third-person singular simple present FOMOs, present participle FOMOing or FOMO-ing, simple past and past participle FOMOed or FOMO'd)

  1. (intransitive) To experience FOMO (“the fear of missing out”); to act on one's FOMO, often impulsively [(often) with into].
    • Within hours of selling out, AfroDroids NFTs started getting flipped on OpenSea for thousands of dollars, with new investors FOMO-ing into the project in case it became the newest PFP project to go to the moon.2024 August, Andrew R. Chow, “Total Rug” (chapter 15), in Cryptomania: Hype, Hope, and the Fall of FTX's Billion-Dollar Fintech Empire, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 113

Noun capitalized: FoMO

FoMO (uncountable)

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of FOMO.

Antonyms of FOMO

Forms of FOMO

Noun
alternative formFoMO
Verb
third-person singular presentFOMOs
present participleFOMOing
present participleFOMO-ing
past participleFOMOed
pastFOMOed
past participleFOMO'd
pastFOMO'd

Origin of FOMO

Coined c. 2004 in the US by Patrick James McGinnis, in the same article as FOBO.

Words that rhyme with FOMO

Questions about FOMO

What does FOMO mean?
FOMO means to experience FOMO (“the fear of missing out”); to act on one's FOMO, often impulsively [(often) with into].
What is FOMO the acronym of?
FOMO is the acronym of fear of missing out.
What part of speech is FOMO?
FOMO can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce FOMO?
FOMO is pronounced /ˈfoʊmoʊ/ (US).
What is the past tense of FOMO?
The past tense of FOMO is FOMOed.

Words near FOMO in the dictionary

  1. fomes
  2. fomiroid
  3. fomite
  4. fomites
  5. fomivirsen
  6. FOMO
  7. FOMO'd
  8. FOMO-ing
  9. FOMOed
  10. FOMOing
  11. Fomor

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: FOMO (page history and authors); FoMO (page history and authors); fear of missing out (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-FOMO.oga.

Cite this entry: “FOMO.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fomo. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.