Hugs and kisses

Hugs and kisses, abbreviated in the Anglosphere as XO or XOXO, is an informal term used for expressing sincerity, faith, love, or good friendship at the end of a written letter, email or text message.

A 2014 article in The Washington Post that drew on interviews with scholars noted that "the Internet abounds with origin theories" yet that "there is no definitive answer to how a cross came to mean a kiss" and even that "less is known about how 'o' came to signify a hug".

Allegedly, in the Middle Ages, a Christian cross might be drawn on documents or letters to mean sincerity, faith, and honesty; the sign was certainly sometimes used in place of a signature.

[3] Unscholarly speculations sometimes extend to the idea that after a cross was written at the end of a document, the writer might kiss it as a show of their sincerity.

[4] The Greek word for Christ, ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, gave rise to the practice of using the Latin letter X as an abbreviation for 'Christ' (similar to the more elaborate Chi Rho symbol).