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What is the full form of LTNS?

Full form of LTNS: Here, we are going to learn about the LTNS, LTNS – which is an abbreviation of Long Time No See in Email jargon, etc. By Anushree Goswami Last updated : March 31, 2024

LTNS: Long Time No See

LTNS is an abbreviation of "Long time, no see".

It is an English phrase used when people meet and greet each other after a while when in between they have not seen each other. Its genesis in American English emerges to be an emulation of broken or Pidgin English, and despite its ungrammaticality, it is extensively acknowledged as a permanent phrase.

The phrase is a multi-word expression that cannot be made clear by the common set of rules of English grammar because of the asymmetrical syntax. It may originate in the end from an English pidgin such as that spoken by Native Americans or Chinese, or emulation of such.

LTNS Origin

• The beginning of the use of this phrase, even if not as a greeting, is from Lieut.-Colonel James Campbell's Excursions, Adventures, and Field-Sports in Ceylon which published in 1843: "Ma-am — long times no see wife — want to go to Colombo see wife."
• In 1901, the original emergence of the phrase "long time no see" in print recorded in Oxford English Dictionary, also found in W. F. Drannan's "Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains", in which a Native American man is recorded as greeting the narrator by saying, "Good morning. Long time no see you." This instance is meant to imitate usage in American Indian Pidgin English.
• In 1900, another Western book "Tales of the Sierras" by Jeff W. Hayes was published, in which the phrase would be used similarly as a greeting. One more time, the phrase was ascribed to an American Indian, "Ugh, you squaw, she no long time see you: you go home much quicker."
• As the 20th century evolved and advanced, "long time no see" began to grow from a phrase in broken English to a regular way to greet an old association or social contact.
• Around 1920, the novelist Raymond Chandler used it in more than one of his books. In Farewell, My Lovely, Moose Malloy drolly tells his ex-girlfriend Velma, "Hiya, babe. Long time no see."
• In 1949, the poet Ogden Nash published his poem "Long Time No See, Bye Now" in The New Yorker. The poem introduces the readers to Mr. Latour, "an illiterate boor" who "calls poor people poor instead of underprivileged."
• In the present time, the phrase "long time no see" is as extensive as a greeting.