What is SMH?
SMH is short for “shaking my head”, an expression widely used in texting, on social networking sites, and on internet chatrooms. It refers to an expression or urban lingo that people use when they encounter something absurd or stupid that they cannot come up with the right words to describe it. And so people just sort of “shake their heads” instead of utter a word or phrase. And to shorten the phrase in mobile phone texting or internet chatting, people use “SMH”. As with many other words and phrases, acronyms and shortened versions of words and/or phrases are the norms in the tech-savvy urban lingo of today. This means that some people are confused and alienated with these new acronyms and expressions that are frequently used by mobile texters and internet chatters.

Other users also use or add profanity to the SMH acronym or term. SMH will sometimes be typed as SMFH, which means “shaking my f*cking head” or SMMFH which means “shaking my mother-f*king head”. Obviously these variations of the original SMH expression may offend some people and so many stick to the more generic SMH. A little less offensive is the variation SMDH or “shaking my damn head” or SMHID or ‘shaking my head in despair’.

SMH may also be used when referring to something that disappoints some people. Like when a person is supposed to or is expected to do something that is fairly easy to do and this particular person is unable to do it, then one may just “shake his head” to mean disappointment or disbelief. When a person is also confronted with a situation wherein he’s got no control of things or when he/she cannot change a particular outcome, he/she could also use SMH as an expression to mean that he/she wouldn’t attempt to make some comment on a particular issue as it wouldn’t cause anything good or bad, and so he/she will just “shake his head” over the situation.