People are only just realizing what 'AM' and 'PM' actually mean

People on social media are only just now realizing that they don't know what AM and PM actually means, and some of the guesses are hilariously off the mark.

Acronyms and initialisms are abundantly common in the English language, but it's surprising how the meaning behind many is unknown to most people online.

Do you know what SCUBA stands for, or CAPTCHA? Even simple ones have confused people in the past, and the rise of modern online dialect means that you're bound to miss the memo somewhere.

AM and PM - indicating the time before and after midday respectively - are some of the most common initialisms used by everyone around the world, but do you actually know what each letter stands for?

People on social media certainly didn't, as Antoine Dinèro declared on X (formerly Twitter) fearing embarassment: "I might be called stupid after this but wtf does "AM" & "PM" stand for ??"

The post has garnered over 21 million views on the platform in just over a week, and 4,600 people have chimed in with replies with more in the quotes as well.

The top reply hilariously gets it wrong by suggesting the answer to be "after midnight and past midnight," which is just about incorrect in every single way once you sit down and think about it.

"Both of my parents would have said 'look it up!'," remarks one user in the replies, and another adds that "I don't think you're stupid for not knowing it, but I think you're, at least, a lil stupid for not looking it up before you posted (shrug emoji)."

Like anything on social media though it's proven to be a fantastic discussion starter that ends up being far more about the reaction than the answer itself.

Thankfully many users have come to the rescue with the right answer - ante meridiem and post meridiem - as the Latinate phrases can be translated to 'before midday' and 'after midday'.

Much like BC and AD, the confusion here likely stems from the meaning not being in English so many end up looking for an answer that simply doesn't exist in their native tongue.

You definitely shouldn't feel too silly if you didn't know it already as many have replied with their own AI chatbot screenshots, indicating that they required the assistance of AI or perhaps a search engine like Google to give themselves a leg up.

It might be something you can use to flex your knowledge or catch one of your friends out in the future though - just don't let on where you got the right answer and pretend like you knew it all along!