I’ve always been a fan of acronyms. And as I work in as an IT weenie for the government, half the words I hear are acronyms or abbreviations of some kind.
FUN FACT: In 1943, Bell Laboratories coined the term acronym as the name for a word (such as SONAR) created from the first letters of each word in a series of words (such as SOund Navigation And Ranging).
By some definitions, acronyms have to be pronounced as words themselves, such as N.A.T.O. or S.C.U.B.A, whereas P.C.M.C.I.A. would be just be considered initialisms. But no one cares anymore, and they are all just referred to as acronyms. Except for me. I’m going to start correcting people.
There are many different breeds of abbreviations, some of which I will show you now:
Standard
- LASER: Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation
- PEBKAC: Problem Encountered Between Keyboard And Chair
- POTS: Plain Old Telephone Service
- JBOD: Just a Bunch of Disks
- BGP: Border Gateway Protocol, also (Be Gettin’ Paid)
- PHB: Pointy Haired Boss
- TACACS: Terminal Access Control Access Control Server
- YTMND: You’re the man now, dog
The Department of Defense and it’s branches seem to relish in the unpronouncibility of it’s acronyms:
- CDRUSSTRATCOM: CommanDeR, United States Strategic Command
- JFCOM: Joint Forces COMmand
Multilayers, or Nested Acronyms
- NetBEUI: NetBIOS End User Interface
- DITSCAP: DoD Information Technology Security Certification and Accreditation Process
Recursive Acronyms
- WINE: WINE Is Not Emulation
- GNU: GNU’s Not Unix!
- VISA: Visa International Service Associations
Backronym, or Contrived acronyms,
Abbreviations where the words were chosen to fit the awesome abbreviation some senator came up with and had his interns stay up all night coming up with the words to fit it. The best example I can think of is this:
- USA PATRIOT Act: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001
Most of this information was tastelessly ripped from Wikipedia.
POST YOUR FAVORITE IN THE COMMENTS. QUIZ ME. I DARE YOU.
Here are some from my (now previous) job. Most of them will reveal themselves upon inquiring the prophet of Google.
BUPERS
DADMS
DISA
DIFMS
DRATS
MODERN (I don’t even know what this stands for)
CIPA
DEMO
I’m not going to attempt to list the acronyms I have to know at work. Let’s just say that when I got read onto one project I got a 12 page pamphlet of acronyms. 12 fucking pages.
another recursive one for you
LAME: Lame ain’t an mp3 encoder
Some others for consideration…
LOL
ROFL
GTFO
FML
UR MOM
But what about portmanteaus!!?
Hah! That really made me laugh – thanks!
I actually learned this one from a friend’s mom who is in her 50s.
DILLIGAF – Do I Look Like I Give A Fuck?