What is your least favourite acronym?
Mine is OOO for Out Of Office. I always misread it in my head like a ghost and it takes me a few seconds to process. It also doesn't translate to speech—you have to say the whole thing.
Interested to see if others have similar acronyms they beef with.
Mtg. A lot of posts and articles use it for Marjory Taylor Green an it always confuses me, I keep trying to figure out what Magic the Gathering has to do with Jewish space lasers.
Yeah same, Magic The Gathering it is.
Tap to deal 5 damage to target creature or player, then add three recharge counters to Jewish Space Laser.
During the untap phase, if there are any recharge counters on Jewish Space Laser, instead of untapping remove one counter. Otherwise, untap as normal.
I worked at a bank for a couple years so I read that as “Mortgage” unless it’s all caps lol
Yes! Imagine not being American, and Magic is the only thing you could ever associate MTG with.
I keep trying to figure out what Magic the Gathering has to do with Jewish space lasers.
tbf, it wouldn't surprise me if those show up in a set at some point
Not an acronym. Unless you pronounce it "Muttaguh" or something?
As a kid, I was in the room at one point while my mom was watching some TV show, maybe law and order or something similar. I heard somebody letting somebody else know (verbally) the details of some victim and described the cause of injury or death or whatever as "GSW". I asked my mom what GSW meant. She said "gun shot wound". I said that that couldn't possibly be right, and she was curious why. I said because "gun shot wound" is 3 syllables and "GSW" is 5; it's literally quicker to say the full thing.
So yeah, GSW is fucking stupid when said aloud, and even me as a dumbass child knew that.
W does that in acronyms. Compare syllables in World Wide Web…
At work we often say "dub dub dub".
"Dubya" is one syllable, maybe two depending on your particular accent
Edit: Unfortunately I was extremely stoned at the time of this message and that should have been "[...] two syllables, maybe one depending [...]" but I'm leaving it up as evidence of my dumbshittery since it spawned discussion. Don't do drugs kids
GSW isn't an acronym as far as I'm concerned. It's an initialism. But it sure is stupid, I will say. Much faster to say it the "long" way.
I think you mean GSW IAAAFAICIAI
Given how many times people make this same initialism point, it’s time we made an acronym for it.
POS I find very funny as I'm often working on Point-of-Sale equipment, and most of it is running Poorly Optimized Software, making the whole thing a Piece of Shit for the users.
Not an acronym though, but an initialism. Acronyms are said like a word, like CRISPR, initialisms aren’t, like ATM.
literally no one cares.
I used to get a kick out of that at my super market because the brand of machine was "RealPOS" adding one more thing to poke fun at.
Just to be “that guy” I wanted to say that an acronym is technically an initialism that you pronounce as a word, like SCUBA, LASER, or NASA. If it’s just letters that stand for something, it’s called an initialism. No one cares (not even me), but I had to say it :P
Most acronyms that have a W in them are pointless to say aloud in English. It’s almost always shorter to just say the words. Like WTF, for example. Those are my least favorite
Oh and YMMV. I used to work with car data and we would use YMMB to mean “year/make/model/body” and so I always start reading YMMV wrong and that bugs me
I care, but mostly because it's fun. Just like apparently there's no such thing as a fish, and that fruits are vegetables...
I thought vegetables weren’t a botanical classification?
Today I learned that laser is an acronym. "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation"
Radar and sonar are both acronyms as well.
Don’t have a least favourite.
But my favourite is WYSIWYG has been mine for 20 years now, it’s so fun to say.
It stands for “What You See Is What You Get” and was used for visual editing programs where you could move things around and the final product would reflect that.
For those who don't know, much of the reason WYSIWYG is so fun is because the accepted pronunciation is "whizzy-wig"!
As a term it rarely gets used any longer, because "visual editors" are now the norm, where once they were the rarity.
Before visual editors, you'd have content on a screen like a document which you could only see how it would actually look by physically printing it onto a piece of paper. This is because the printer itself knew about fonts and paper size and all that, and the editor didn't.
Nowadays even with technically non-WYSIWYG editors like markdown text you can still instantly preview the rendered output on screen, so there isn't as much need to call it out as a feature.
WYSIWYG is also pretty common these days for tabletop gaming, with regard for models using the rules for whatever weapons or equipment they are actually holding. This came around as often people build the model one way (e.g. with a machine gun) before a rule change, after which they want to use the better rules without re-doing the model (e.g. with a flamethrower).
And designing graphical UIs and having the tool generate skeleton code for you. Good times.
I agree, most fin acronym to say
There's also WYGIWYW ("What You Get Is What You Want") and is primarily used for latex, because you give up some manual control for a (allegedly) better looking result.
It's infuriating to read all the comments without explanations what said acronym means.
IANAL but you should RTFM because PEBKAC.
(IANAL is my favorite ever acronym because it's funny dammit... I was just looking for an excuse to sneak it in somewhere in this thread. RTFM is a fine acronym but I have such a negative association with it because it's almost exclusively used by assholes. PEBKAC is just an elitist acronym whenever not used ironically.)
I, also, ANAL.
Totally agree on RTFM, I almost exclusively see it used by people who really need to put you down to feel adequate. Same thing with the assholes who answer a question with a LMGTFY (let me Google that for you) link, who think they’re clever but have entirely missed the point of asking for input from actual humans.
I don’t know PEBKAC and I’m kind of afraid to look it up.
A cool turn on that one is by the Arch Linux Wiki, which calls it Read The FINE Manual. Owning to the fact that this particular wiki is quite excellent. I use Arch BTW.
IITRATCWEWSAM means what op said.
My least favorite is IANAL (no pun intended), my favorite is RTFM, I use it a lot!
BofA is ugly but it's mainly a US thing, no one else uses it.
I can only read it as "I Anal" and the teenage boy in me giggles and I forget what I am reading.
Get him out of you RIGHT NOW
IWPITTWAWOTAFTTDNKTY (I wish people in this thread would also write out the acronym for those that do not know them yet)
IA (I agree)
Norway has a weird obsession with making translated acronyms for well established terms. Lately, after many years of use of "AI", the Language Council decided that the term should be changed to "KI", as that is the "correct" Norwegian acronym. Not only does it feel wrong to say, but it invades another local acronym for me.
To top it of, that council decided to make "KI-generated" the "word of the year", which seems like a pat on their own shoulder to brilliantly making the acronym.
I hate it.
KI-generated
A Kamehameha is also KI-generated.
I take it the Language Council serves a similar role to the Spanish or French Academy of Language, and that it takes a prescriptive attitude, correct?
im glad that english prescriptivism is mainly just a social thing tbh
Killer Instinct-generated.
In Czech we had/have this too. I haven't heard it in years now so maybe it's finally gone, but when Morpheus tells Neo about the first "UI" (umělá inteligence = artificial intelligence).
word of the year lol smh
Do you remember before we had usb devices, our laptops had credit-card-sized PCMCIA slots?
I love that word. What's it mean? People can't memorise computer industry acronyms. ;-)
Oh wow! I knew about TWAIN (technology without an interesting name), but that takes the cake!
Sorry to ruin the fun but it stands for "Personal Computer Memory Card International Association"
There is a joke around the name, as you said, though :)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Computer_Memory_Card_International_Association
Nothing ruined :) I knew that, and wanted to share the fun version first. Thanks for providing the true version, of course.
Another real acronym with a funny story (maybe only to old geeks like me) is STONITH.
Back when "high availability" meant two servers with shared storage and a "heartbeat" network connection, if one of the servers failed, the second one would notice there was no more heartbeat from the first and pick up the traffic so users would never know.
However, if the servers lost the network connection, there'd be no way to tell if the other server was still running and if both continued accessing the shared storage, they could corrupt the application data. So each server could take over if it noticed the other wasn't available by executing STONITH (Shoot The Other Node In The Head) basically sending a power down signal to the PDU, making sure the other node couldn't corrupt data.
That is amazing! Thank you for this!
My dad is from the punch card era and he had stories like this. But that one is new to me!
Installing linux drivers / modules for PCMCIA wifi cards :(
That’s the neat part, you don’t
Happily it started being known as PC-CARD.
FTW. For years I thought it meant "Fuck The What". Even now that's the first thing that comes to mind and have a hard time remembering the actual meaning.
There's also FTFY, which I thought was a way of throwing offence at the topic and the person that brought it up
It's used so frequently for offences that I'm not surprised at that.
After "fuck the what" it started to mean "For the win". What else is it supposed to be?
What else is it supposed to be?
It means fuck the world. But some jerk made it for the win and ruined all my fun
I’ve never heard “Fuck the What”, it’s always been “Fuck the World” before also becoming “For the Win” for me.
Fuck the world.
But it's normally For the win?
Friday Tuesday Wednesday, for some reason
Dated someone with FTW tattoo. I always thought it was Fuck the World but he sweaaaars he meant it as “Forever Two Wheels”, some motorcycle thing. Yeh right bud.
These two sayings mean the same thing. They both mean “I’m not staying here”
It's always been For The Win to me. Fuck the world seems to have been before my time.
FMLA. I start reading it as fuck my life before realizing it’s the family and medical leave allowance. So much hinges on that extra A.
fuck my life anally
now i've ruined it for you permanently
I always read ofc as "of fucking course" it makes no sense to include the f.
Oc is already taken for original content
Wow I always just assumed I was the only one who did this! Greetings, fellow of fucking course'er.
OC is already original content though. Not that I like OFC but OC is already taken in my head.
What the hell else would it be?
i read it as literally 'of c-'. like someone got cut of speaking.
My favorite is GIF cause we all agree how it's pronounced, no confusion there. If you think it's said the other way you are wrong and very stupid.
Choosy moms choose GIF
Gif
Gift
Gifford
Giraffe
Giant
Gist
If anyone can come up with a word that starts with GIF that uses the J sound I'd be happy to learn what it is, but all the GIF words I can think of use the G sound.
SQL when pronounced as sequel. Squall or even squirrel would have been nicer imo
Their original product was called SEQUEL. Structured English Query Language. They got sued by a company called sequel so changed it to SQL, but everybody still calls it sequel.
oh cool. my dislike for it was out of ignorance as often the case. thanks for letting me know
So same as JS then
I hear SQL way more than Sequel. Luckily, since I don't like hearing it as sequel.
Squeel
Ive worked with tons of DB devs and admins. Nobody really seems to care. A bunch of us say "sequel" and a bunch of us say "ess cue ell", even in the same answer-and-response in a conversation and nobody seems to bat an eye. You'll get a comment or a smirk if you say "squirrel" or "squeal", but that's about it.
I vote "squeal".
I'll pile on an list FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). It's dumb as both a concept and acronym. Though sadly, it's also quite a successful marketing tactic.
How is it dumb as a concept? Is it not a way to describe human nature?
What's the marketing meaning? I only know about the psychological effect of feeling anxious when disconnected or not taking part to an event.
Triggering that anxiety to sell you stuff. Seasonal or promotional things and big sales are usually aimed at taking advantage of fomo.
Using that feeling to get people to spend money on stuff they don't need (clothes, micro transactions, unnecessarily replacing electronics, etc.)
ETA, but not the estimated time of arrival that everyone knows.
The ETA that Tumblr and XX chromosomes made popular that actually means Edited to add...
Rather than just Edit: or E:.
But it means I added something!... Right... That's literally the definition of edit... Blood is thicker than the water of the womb too right? Lmfao.
I always confuse that first ETA between Estimated time of arrival vs Estimated time to arrival.
ETA is also Czech (formerly) brand of household appliances.
CAPTCHA is pretty bad, apparently it’s Completely Automated Public Turing-test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
Source: http://www.captcha.net/
Edit: I also dislike www, it’s annoying to say 👎
People in my old company used to genuinely say dub dub dub as in "double-u double-u double-u". Fucking dicks 😂.
It's the correct way to speak a URL... dub dub dub dot something dot com == https://www.something.com
I never understood why it's called double-u. It looks more like a double-v. Most of the time, the sound in words is even more similar to a V than a U. There is probably some reason in ancient versions of the letters.
I'm with Norm on this: "ID" is stupid. "I" stands for "i" and "D" stands for "dentification".
I don't think that's an acronym, it's just an abbreviation
But then why is it pronounced "eye dee" as if each letter stood for a separate word, and not "eyed" as if it was a short hand, like every other abbreviation?
Identification Document
under my roof it’s Identification Documentation
my roof is a bridge
I am a troll
Related, OOP for Out Of Pocket. In software, its Object Oriented Programming. My programming lead uses the first meaning in email frequently
Also where did this pocket crap come from? Are you ever in a pocket? What's going on with that?
I've seen speculation (though I don't currently have a source available) that "out of pocket" in that sense is intended to reflect that the subject is uncontrollable or not manageable. Which actually originally surprised me because it implies a connection between "out of pocket" (in the sense of unavailable) and "in the pocket" (as in, controlled by or heavily influenced by an outside entity; "that politician is in the pocket of Big Oil").
I also have this sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind that I've heard "out of pocket" used in a film, maybe by a spy or secret service agent referring to a VIP not being where they're supposed to be, but that's also something I don't have links about. It would fit in with the above concept, though.
So maybe the middle managers who use that shorthand are trying to sound like loose cannons and suave people of intrigue, when really they're just dropping off their dry cleaning or something similarly mundane? "You can't control me during this time, I'll be at my 7-year-old's ballet recital!"
That's kinda cool - I'd never heard of the alternate meanings. It's always been something along the lines of "at your own expense" here.
OOPs
iYKYK. Took me forever to figure out what it means.
Ah yes, Apple's famous iYouKnowYouKnow.
It’s basic logical notation.
if YK, then YK
Some will ask what YK is. But it doesn’t matter! The statement is true.
I have seen nerdy programming groups type yk->yk but that might be unique to my group.
haha
It makes me think of that company that makes all the zippers
TMYK (the more you know)
MVP. It means two things, both are polar opposites. Absolute bare minium product, or most valuable player / product.
Same with proof-of-concept and piece-of-crap!
Piece of shit point of sale
point of contact
Someone at work insisted the MVP emoji meant Minimum Viable Product. I get that the term exists, and that we use it, but it's way more niche than Most Valuable Player, and it's certainly no emoji.
GOP is shitty one for sure.
Gaslight, Obstruct, Project
Grab Om-by-da Pussy
CRISPR is neither a refrigerator compartment or a Nestle candy bar
Someone should totally make a nestle crunch lookalike bar and name it crispr.
i18n I know it's not technically an acronym but what a fucking obscure way to write a word that's going to be constantly around non-english speakers. All the other ones in this family are also quite obnoxious but i18n is especially awful.
Never heard of that one, what is it and when would it be used?
Internationalization, basically making your thing accessible in other languages and cultural customs (like twelve and a half being 12,5 and anything related to fucking dates).
We will never know...
It's a numeronym!
I agree, very weird. I thought i18n was some weird sound thing that I hadn't figured out yet. "'eye-eighteen-ehn' isn't too far from 'internationalization', I guess"
After 20 years in EMS, (see how it starts immediately - Emergency Medical Services), The whole bloody damned field is nothing but acronyms for as far as the eye can see.
From BPM - Beats per minute, to ABC - Airway, Breathing, circulation, (which today is more like ACB - Airway, Circulation, Breathing) to OPQRST - Onset, provoke/pallation, Quality, Region/Radiation, Severity, Time to A-Fib - Atrial Fibrillation to SOB - Shortness of Breath.
I hate them all........
FFS. As in, for fucks sake, we all know it's FFS?!
Edit: sorry, drunk after work and reread the question. FFS is my fav.
You had one job FFS!
Final Fantasy Seven
I spend so much time in trans spaces online that it took me a second to realize you weren't being an ass to people who've had FFS (facial feminization surgery)
YMMV. That one took me FOREVER to figure out.
I guess that's because the ads mentioning outrageous mileage are very old.
SMH so much hate
I thought that was Shaking My Head..? Similar uses, I guess. But if it's as you say, I may stop using.
I always read that as "Shaking My Head"
Shushing my hands
Someone I knew really abused it and would say things on Facebook like "Peasants are everywhere, acting like fools, SMH. Keep your head up, Queen"
obscure corporate jargon like KPIs (key performance indicators), KRIs (key risk indicators) which, after having thrown them at me during an interview for a college intern position, made the interviewer wonder why i got so flustered. i would hesitate to throw any acronyms around in any interview, let alone for a college student.
by the way, i got the internship. the acronyms weren't even used in my position.
I had an interview for an internship at an engineering company. They sort of forgot they were interviewing for an internship, or they unconsciously framed it as a job interview.
At some point they were like “Well besides a fascination with transportation and an ability to learn quickly, what would you actually bring the team?”
And I said “Not much. I’m a college sophomore”
They laughed and I got the internship. Great company.
TBF
To Be Fucked.