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More on Acronyms
5

More on Acronyms

More on Acronyms

(OP)
Now here is one of the things about acronyms that begins to bug me but good; the Acronym has become more important than the title or phrase it replaces. Phrases are becoming cumbersome, badly constructed and even grammatically cause serious damage to the language.

This is one of the milder offenders.

ASH : Against Smoking for Health reasons.

On the other hand this makes good sense

SALT: Strategic Arms Limitations Talks.... maybe they got lucky and maybe they didn't but at least SALT derives from a sound and meaningful description.

So, anyone care to nominate the best and worst of them?

RE: More on Acronyms

Sometimes, that's the one pleasure I get from a project; to come up with an elegant acronym that's pronounciable AND have some vague connection to the underlying phrase.

Where's the creativity in coming up with a gibberish acronym that must be spelled out?

MADD is a great example of that creative process.  

SALT might have been as well; brings images of the pillar of salt result from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

TTFN

RE: More on Acronyms

(OP)
Nice one IRstuff, a nice acronym, a meaningful description and you have pointed out the cream, a subtle allusion (intended or not) to a nice allegorical thingamy. (sorry, ran out of brain)

RE: More on Acronyms

By definition an acronym must be "pronounceable", otherwise it is just an abbreviation.

RE: More on Acronyms

3
I always liked "TWAIN" (as in the computer interface for scanners and digital cameras etc):

"Technology Without An Interesting Name"

Officially, the TWAIN Working Group says that:

"After the name chosen originally turned out to be already trademarked, an 11th hour meeting of the group came up with TWAIN, deriving it from the saying "Ne'er the twain shall meet", because the program sits between the driver and the application. The name is not intended to be an acronym."

However, this makes one wonder why it is always presented in all upper-case letters. Also, I understand the original name was "CLASP" - Connecting Link for Applications and Source Peripherals. It sounds to me like it is a contrived ("clever") acronym which also has some sort of logical meaning.

RE: More on Acronyms

My favorite acronym is SCRAM. It means an emergency shutdown of a nuclear power plant. It actually stands for Safely Cut the Rope Axe Man.

RE: More on Acronyms

I just like SNAFU

I think most know what I'm saying....
nick

RE: More on Acronyms

And its brother FUBAR

TTFN

RE: More on Acronyms

OK I'll bite what's FUBAR? Haven't heard of it.

RE: More on Acronyms

According to Dick Marcinko, FUBAR is in the hierarchy between SNAFU and TARFU.

RE: More on Acronyms

So then from lowest to highest it is:

You know, the usual.
SNAFU
FUBAR
TARFU
Sit in the back row at the project meeting.
Call in sick the day of the project meeting.
Start sending out resumes.

RE: More on Acronyms

Thanks Tick, that clears it up completely.

RE: More on Acronyms

Venaerable:
Commanding respect by virtue of age, dignity, character, or position.
Worthy of reverence, especially by religious or historical association: venerable relics.
Venerable Abbr. Ven. or V.
Roman Catholic Church. Used as a form of address for a person who has reached the first stage of canonization.
Used as a form of address for an archdeacon in the Anglican Church or the Episcopal Church.


On the other hand if you take the general meaning of venerable, it fits nicely with leannes’ post on Thread1010-89547.

slepnir,  I am not offended and suspect you won't be either.  It was just a little too juicy to pass up.  After all they are just words and it is a whole lot more about where our heart is when we use them.

Jesus is THE life,
Leonard

RE: More on Acronyms

http://www.457thbombgroup.org/Fate/RLP089A.HTML, implies that TARFU is possibly equally venerable, although this is the first time I've ever heard of it.

There's one more level, although I'm not sure quite where it goes: Tango Uniform.

TTFN

RE: More on Acronyms

The U.S. military is famous for acronyms. I had never heard of TARFU but could have used it on many occasions. I will store in memory for future reference.
AWOL comes to mind immediately.


Is DOS pronounced das or dose? I have a stubborn colleague who insists it is DOSE!

RE: More on Acronyms

I think is more like "doss", rhymes with "Hoss" from Ponderosa

TTFN

RE: More on Acronyms

Quote (MintJulep):

By definition an acronym must be "pronounceable", otherwise it is just an abbreviation.

If that were the case, then TLA wouldn't be one.

It may or may not be true, depending on who you believe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym

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RE: More on Acronyms

TLA could in theory stand for "Three Letter Abbreviation" but I've always heard it described as "Three Letter Acronym".

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RE: More on Acronyms

According to the "Oxford Pocket Fowler's":

An abbreviation consisting of a sequence of initial letters which are each pronounced as separate letters is an "initialism". (e.g. BBC, UN, MP) (My dictionary, however, doesn't recognise "initialism" as a real word.)

"Acronyms" are "initialisms" that have gone one stage further, having achieved the status of words, and are pronounced and grammatically treated as such (e.g. Aids, laser, radar, NATO, UNESCO).

Fowler's notes that in everyday use, the term "acronym" is often used loosely to describe abbreviations which are in fact actually "initialisms".

Early in the life of a newly-coined acronym, and especially for acronyms which are proper nouns denoting the initial letters of the formal name of organisations etc, it is usual practice (but not universal) to form it in all upper case letters. (e.g. NATO, UN)

However, if the acronym is "successful", and becomes part of everyday language, it usually evolves to an all lower case form, or just an initial capital for proper nouns, and it may generally be forgotten that the letters "once" stood for something. (e.g. radar, laser, Anzac)

The term "acronym" apparently first appeared in the 1940s - maybe someone can find out who coined it, and then we can ask them about its proper usage!

RE: More on Acronyms

That's seems true Julian.  I know that radar and laser are acronyms, but I don't remember the individual words.  Please don't waste forum space by posting them – that’s not the issue.

I know that lots of programmers today do not even know that Basic, as in Visual Basic, is an acronym.  That means that “B” in VBA does not represent a word, but another acronym.

Excluding recursive acronyms (i.e. PHP), how many other multi-levels acronyms can you identify, and how deep can you go?

RE: More on Acronyms

(OP)
Julians post provides a nice working definition which clarifies my understanding. Thanks.

This leads me back to my original post: Good acronyms and clumsy ones and those that are beyond the pale.
That is, when the description or title has been chosen for the acronym rather than the inate meaning. Acronyms that require explanation are poor things; (Hallo, I'm from ASH, Against Smoking for Health reasons")

CajunCenturion adds depth with the concept of nested acronyms.

But there are some clever near misses. A worthy mention is FCUK.
FCUK is the French Clothing store in the UK. This hovers neatly between an initialisms and an acronym depending on whether you retain the letter order or pronounce the implied word.

I was going to say and will say, because it took so long to dredge it from my memory even though it is not appropriate here, that this is a nice seguey to the observation in another thread about the ability to read some words or even sentences where the first and last letters of each word are in the correct place though the others are jumbled up.

So FCUK is a very clever marketing gimmick. It is an apt initialism, it postures as an acronym and generated enough free publicity to satisfy even the most avariciuos publicity hunters.

Then we have the derivatives which are pure marketing ploys, the false acronyms. Laser Maser etc are true acronyms but Taser is a trademark and not an acronym at all. But clever, none the less because of its derived connotations. Incidentally, there is now under development a Plasma Taser which doesn't have any wires....

The purest acronyms are perhaps the earliest like ASDIC, SONAR and SCUBA, the almost accidental creations. But the earliest? does anyone know?

RE: More on Acronyms

jmw,

The oldest acronym?

It seems the term "acronym" itself dates from the 1940s. However, the first deliberately-generated acronyms (as opposed to “initialisms”) predate this, going back to the First World War (eg Anzac, AWOL). The only known earlier example of a deliberately contrived acronym is a late 19th century brand-name, “Seroco”, or Sears Roebuck Company.

A couple of “Forgotten Acronyms” that I have been surprised to discover are in fact acronyms:

Pelican Crossing (common in UK, probably unknown in USA): Pedestrian Light – Controlled

Pascal (computer language): “Programme Appliqué A la Sélection et la Compilation Automatique de la Littérature ; (also named after Blaise Pascal)

Flak: Flieger ‘aeroplane’ + Abwehr ‘defence’ + Kanone ‘canon’.

Zip Code: Zone Improvement Program

Rad (unit of measure of radiation): Radiation Absorbed Dose (a nice recursive one!)

(Please don’t bother contradicting me if you have sources that apparently contradict mine – it seems that for every artificial catchy name, there exists one group that tries to deny that it ever was an acronym, and another whose sole goal in life is to prove that it is!)

RE: More on Acronyms

The only item I would question is classifying RAD as recursive.

RE: More on Acronyms

Here is a good multi-level acronym:

VORTAC -> VOR and TACAN
   VOR - > VHF Omnidirectional Ranging
      VHF - Very High Frequency
   TACAN -> Tactical Air Navigation

RE: More on Acronyms

A nested acronym from the commercial nuclear world (famous for it's TLA's, FLA's 5LA's etc):

AMSAC = ATWS Mitigation System Actuation Circuitry
ATWS = Anticipated Transient Without Scram.

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RE: More on Acronyms

I just read this on a website.

"For those who care, PCMCIA stands for Personal Computer Memory Card International Association, or as the industry joke goes, People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms."
    

Ray Reynolds
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
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RE: More on Acronyms

MadMango,
Had to give you a star for that one.  I have an iPAQ pocket PC and as I am learning and reading how to use it, PCMCIA keeps popping its ugly head up and I keep wondering what in the world does that mean and 15 minutes hence I will forget since now that I know I don't care anymore?  It is legal for me too since it is only an initailism.

Does all of this have shades of Orson Wells' 1984 where he writes about duckspeak I think he called it?  Hope I have my author and title correctly linked.  If so I think it is the same book where he also predicted big brother who is drawing closer as we speak.

Jesus is THE life,
Leonard

RE: More on Acronyms

George Orwell's "1984".

And yes, it is the source of both "Big Brother" and "duckspeak", and many other memorable literary inventions (Room 101, Doublespeak, Sexcrime, etc).

From Chapter 5:

" There is a word in Newspeak ", said Syme, " I don't know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse, applied to someone you agree with, it is praise."

I recall back in the early 1980s, there was much discussion of the pending arrival of the real 1984, and whether George Orwell had got it right or wrong. To me, the great irony was that he was absolutely spot on - and nobody seems to have noticed - or cares!

RE: More on Acronyms

(OP)
The worst acronym of the modern world:
WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get, except, in the real world, you don't get what you see.

RE: More on Acronyms

One of the oldest I know of isn't precisely in English: INRI, for Jesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum inscribed on the cross by the romans.

RE: More on Acronyms

Then there is the strange one:
ZULU = GMT = Greenwich Mean Time.

RE: More on Acronyms

(OP)
ZULU is neither an initialism nor an acronym, nor yet an abreviation. It is one of those strange words the military love to use.

RE: More on Acronyms

Actually it's not so strange when you understand how it become to know as ZULU time.  Each of the Earth's 24 timezones have been assigned a letter (T and O excluded).  It happens that the Greenwich Time Zone has the letter designation "Z", which when using the phonetic alphabet, is pronounced ZULU.

Also you might want to note that GMT is no longer the official name.  It's now UTC or Coordinated Universal Time.

RE: More on Acronyms

A short note on universal time from McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms. The following are astronomy concepts.

Universal time: Greenwich Mean Time = GMT

Universal time 0: the uncorrected time of the earth's rotation as measured by the transit of stars across the observer's meridian. Abbreviated UT0.

Universal time 1: UT0 corrected for polar motion; it is the true angular rotation. Abbreviated UT1.

Universal time 2: UT1 corrected for seasonal variations in the earth rotation. Abbreviated UT2.

And finally:

Universal time coordinated: The coordinated time kept by a uniformly running clock, approximately the measure UT2. Abbreviated UTC.

RE: More on Acronyms

Good link.
KTHXBYE

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RE: More on Acronyms

Just found a great one.

SOWHAT- Subcommittee on Wheelchairs and Transportation

"But what... is it good for?"
Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
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RE: More on Acronyms

When I was in the Boy Scouts, you went to the bathroom (#2), you used the KYBO (kai-bo).
Keep Your Bowels Open. At least that's what I was told. They also sent me to find a Left Handed Smoke Shifter, and a Raisin Peeler.

An interesting aside, in Mexico, they pronounce the initials of a university as a word. UNAM, a huge school with a great soccer team, is ooo-nam. I was down in Mexico City playing soccer, and a guy asked me if I was a fan of "ookla" soccer. He meant UCLA.

Clyde

RE: More on Acronyms

I do not know if ABB is an acronym. But it has an old and complex history. The A stems from ASEA (Allmanna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget) and BB is from BBC (Brown-Boveri Compagnie). Some say that the second B does not come from BBC but from StromBergs (the Finnish company that was acquired before the merger with BBC).

If you ask an ABB spokesman about the letters, he will tell you that they just mean ABB - nothing else. That is a company deciscion.

RE: More on Acronyms

A couple of mixed-up acronyms (or initialisms):

SAC (the folks what brought you all those steel seismic design recommendations):

S is for SEA, Structural Engineers Association of California
A is for ATC, Applied Technology Council
C is for CUREe, California Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering

An acronym of acronyms.

Then there's SSPC:  The Society for Protective Coatings.  The extra S must be what happened to the last S in Dial-A-Mattress (the venerable 1-800-MATTRES of my halcyon childhood).  Actually it used to be the Structural Steel Painting Council.  They changed the name for more general application but kept the letters.

Hg

RE: More on Acronyms

IMHO the worst acronyms are slcm (pronounced slickum) for sea launched cruse missile and glcm (pronounced glickum) for ground launched cruse missile.  The first time I heard these I was LOL.  That’s my $0.02 worth.

RE: More on Acronyms

On the topic of old acronyms:

From 1945 (the year it was put in service, not necessarily named), the first electronic computer, ENIAC: electronic numerical integrator and computer.

RE: More on Acronyms

We had a client that loved acronyms.  There was a running joke about TLA's abd FLA's...three letter acronyms and four letter acronyms!

RE: More on Acronyms

How about FONSI = finding of no significant impact

NASA loves acronyms. Even their name is one.

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