Fomo

//ˈfoʊmoʊ// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Initialism of fear of missing out. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism, uncountable

    "In this state of social flux, FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out, weighs heavily on the psyche. ... Notice that as a person becomes more and more FOMO, the energy needed to maintain such an active social life is tremendous."

  2. 2
    Alternative form of FOMO. alt-of, alternative, uncountable
Verb
  1. 1
    To experience FOMO (“the fear of missing out”); to act on one's FOMO, often impulsively [(often) with into]. intransitive

    "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."

Synonyms

All synonyms
fear of missing outfear of missing out

Antonyms

All antonyms
JOMO

Example

More examples

"Seeing what everyone else posts on social media gives me FOMO."

Etymology

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

Related phrases

fear of missing out

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.