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.
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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 haven't played Magic in 25 (maybe 30?) years, but you captured the tone for sure. Do you work for Wizards?
I wish, but no
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.
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?
this guy going around saying "oosa" instead of USA 😂
Is that not what it’s called???
Oosa Jar Jar Binks
It sounds like you’re saying “You ass”
Who me? Or the one I was replying to, right? 😄
Acronyms can be pronounced as words, like NASA and UNESCO; as individual letters, like CIA, TNT, NPC, BLM, and ATM; or as both letters and words, like JPEG (JAY-peg), CSIS (SEE-sis), and IUPAC (I-U-pak). Some are not universally pronounced one way or the other, and it depends on the speaker's preference or the context in which it is being used, such as SQL (either "see-kwel" or "ess-cue-el").
Come on now. We know this is only because people usually don't know the difference, not because it's correct. Acronyms are pronounced as words, initialisms are spoken one letter at a time. Every article I've clicked says the same thing, confirming what I said. I'm doubling down. 😁
Eh, I know I'm supposed to fight my way up this hill and take it, but I'm just so damn tired. You're most correct. I acquiesce and stand in awe of your wisdom and grace.
😄 Okay that's too generous lol. I know of certain things, but I know I'm dumb as shit about other stuff. ❤️
It's a klobasnek, not a kolach. No man, kolache is plural, but that's still a klobasnek
See? I don't know wtf any of that means!
Nobody but me wants to adopt this, but I insist this should be "squeal".
It's weird, when I say SQL I pronounce it sequel. But I pronounce MySQL as my-s-q-l. Never thought about squeal. Maybe that's for sqlite? Squealite
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.
I guess it's faster to write, so people started to say it as well.
How often do You have to use the phrase "gun shot wound" in everyday speak? Found the American.
It was specifically in a police TV show, spare us the tried joke.
It's used a lot in law enforcement and certain medical environments like hospitals with trauma centers and morgues.
In law enforcement? Probably every day, yeah. The average person, surprisingly not all that often. In fact, law enforcement probably uses it hundreds of times a day, and more importantly writes and reads it hundreds of times a day, thus the acronym.
Even that is a very American way of thinking. The number of gun shot wounds a police officer sees in the US is way higher than in comparable European countries.
I could not find exact data for wounds, but if you take gun fatalities as placeholder (I am sure they are connected) here:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rates-from-firearms?tab=chart&country=AUS~USA~DEU~CAN~FRA~ESP~ITA~JPN
You can see that precovid (2019) in the US there were 63x more gun fatalities than in Germany per person. In an average 1 million person city the police in the US has to deal with about 32 gun fatalities. In Germany that city has 1 every other year, in Australia it is 1-2 every year.
While the fictional US police department has every two weeks one or more fatality, the fictional German and Australian see it once a year.
So the frequency of it occuring and it being written about is way higher in the US than in comparable countries.
(Of course the comparing the amount of firearm fatalities between countries is not an exact replacement for gun shot wounds, but it should be close)
Don't worry, I liked your post.
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
In what accent is "dub-ya" one syllable?
Some parts of texas
Anything more than "dub" will be 2+ syllables.
The b is silent and the vowels ran together
So "duh"?
I've heard some folks where it comes out more akin to "dubby"
Dub-by is still 2 syllables
Dubya Dubya Dubya dot educashun dot com
WTF?
WWJD?
WTFWJD??
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.
That's an unfortunate, incorrect phrasing. 😅
It's a very deliberate phrasing, since not everyone agrees that initialisms are not acronyms.
Personally I think that "ackhually that's an initialism not an acronym 🤓" is exactly the kind of ultimately irrelevant distinction that internet know-it-alls love to know and point out. I know because I used to be like that too when I was younger.
But often those distinctions are not universally acknowledged or useful in all contexts. Like how strawberries are not scientifically berries, but we still often group them as berries.
Nitpicking word definitions is pointless when the distinction being pointed out is not relevant for the conversation.
I'm not saying I'm the tone of "aaackshually".
I personally love to learn these types of things, so in case someone learns something they'd like to learn, I'm here for it. If people get butthurt or annoyed about it because "I've been using it wrong and that makes it right..." 🤷♂️ I dunno.
Where in the world do you live that you need five syllables to 'GSW'?
Any English speaking country? "Gee-ess-dou-ble-u". 5 syllables.
Yeah, you're right, I'm wrong.
Not the south! Gee-ess-dub-ya ftw.
Hate to burst, but I believe "dub-y-ah" would still be 3. Even though it's fast enough that it's barely perceptible.
Nah, dubyah is two syllables dub-yah. Unless you somehow make yeah into a two syllable word.
There's a context here though, namely that it is preceded by a "bh". But I'll concede.
That's most assuredly not another syllable. Dub, as in I dub thee. Ya, as in ya, I know. There's a glide across a very sliiiiiight E sound, but it's also present when you just say "ya", it's more "e-ya". So either "ya" is two syllables, or dub-ya is two.
I'm inclined to go either way on this one. It's very slight.
Depends on which part of the south
Say W really slowly out loud and count the syllables. Where do you live that W isn't three syllables?
I was counting double as one syllable. It's still early on Sunday morning for me here.
In a lot of the US, w is pronounced as two syllables in conversational speech: dub-yuh
That doesn't excuse my stupidity because I'd guess that the places that say dub-yuh also say eh-yuss for 's'.
A lot of them do, yes.
Netherlands. It's pronounced "way" here
So youse say way way way dot com?
Dot in dutch is punt
Way way way Punt!
Scooooooorrrrrreeeee!!!!
Putting this on a T-shirt
Well, yeah way way way google punt com
I’ve heard WWW pronounced: dub-dub-dub
"Dub-yah"
Gee Ess Dub-ya
This gave me cancer
In English it's G-S-Dou-ble-U
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.
I hate all acronyms that aren't defined.
You see it constantly in gaming communities. Ah, yes, the game "AC." You know the one.
Assassin's Creed? Animal Crossing? Armored Core? Ace Combat?
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.
Initialisms are a type of acronym. All initialisms are acronyms but not all acronyms are initialisms.
Other way around.
No
Hmm, okay, it's apparently debated. However, the only way I've learned it is that initialisms are words formed from initial letters of included words, and acronyms are initialisms pronounced as words. It seems like it varies by country as well.
I think it makes logical sense that acronyms are initialisms, since initialism just implies that it's formed from the initials, thus all abbreviations formed from the initials of the words are initialisms, while a subset of those can be pronounced as a word and thus can be called acronyms. Personally I think it's very important that things are named such that one can logically deduce their origin and meaning.
I think WTF may be an exception since it prevents you from saying "fuck" out loud. I try to reserve cuss words for really bad situations.
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.)
And still this MF (Mother Fucker) doesn't write what any of it stands for.
IANAL - I am not a lawyer
RTFM - Read the fucking manual
PEBCAK - Problem exists between chair and keybord
When will you ever use pebcak?
I work in IT, so we see pebcak issues fairly often
Along with the classic ID-10t error. Although, I've always seen it as PEBKAC.
Could also be a layer 8 issue.
Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.
Like that time my uncle told me his laptop wasn't charging and I discovered that he'd plugged a phone charger into the headphone socket.
Also occasionally PICNIC for problem in chair, not in computer.
PEBKAC: Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair, meaning it's a user error
Every time that I see this acronym I'm tempted to pronounce it as ['rʲefkas], then I remember "ah, it isn't Cyrillic".
Would that mean anything if it were?
No, but simply looking for something and then remembering that it doesn't exist makes me feel stupid.
Nah, that's IT people venting due to the overpopulation of (L)users.
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.
Are you an Analrapist?
I was, but I'm making ANUSTART
IDK WTF TAM.
TAM?
“there”
Stands for..
They All Mean?
IITRATCWEWSAM means what op said.
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.
Had an old colleague who kept abbreviating 'follow up' as 'f/up.'
"Yeah we should be okay, I'll f/up on that later today."
"Hey are you able to f/up on this?"
"Hey, I f/uped with our boss today on our issue."
Ftfy always becomes "fuck that, fuck you" in my head.
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
Lol what?
Happily it started being known as PC-CARD.
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.
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
I've been told what it means yet every time I see it my brain goes "for the...." and I can't figure out the last 2 letters. And I have to look it up to be reminded that it means "fixed that for you". But every time I forget and I have to look it up again.
Fuck That, Fuck You
Haha I love that
But Fuck that & Fuck you.
Maybe you’re more of an ft4u kinda guy
Same.
For the fucking year?
Free Eggos ftfy! Alright!
For the fiscal year
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?
This list gets progressively more FTW.
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.
Not an acronym unless you pronounce it "Futtawuh" or something.
Which I do.
😄👍 Nice
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.
IWPITTWAWOTAFTTDNKTY (I wish people in this thread would also write out the acronym for those that do not know them yet)
IA (I agree)
I always read ofc as "of fucking course" it makes no sense to include the f.
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.
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.
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.
SQL when pronounced as sequel. Squall or even squirrel would have been nicer imo
GUI. Stop sounding it out as gooey it makes me uncomfortable.
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 don't really like it when people use acronyms when talking about music albums, it always takes me far too long to figure out what they actually mean.
Special shoutouts to TDSotM and ItCotCK.
Related, OOP for Out Of Pocket. In software, its Object Oriented Programming. My programming lead uses the first meaning in email frequently
iYKYK. Took me forever to figure out what it means.
MVP. It means two things, both are polar opposites. Absolute bare minium product, or most valuable player / product.
Minimum Viable Product, yeah.
Also not an
initialismacronym, but an initialism. Unless you pronounce it "Muvapuh" or something.Definitely an initialism.
Sorry, yes! That's what I actually meant 😄 Edited to reflect that. Thank you!
Vmmpah
The remix version of Mmmbop
Mmmvhpah?
Move pee
That's the one. Running with that.
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.
WYSIWYG
What You See Is What You Get
IYKYK. Took me forever to memorize, I had to look it up every time I came across it and no way I'll ever say it aloud.
IYDKNYK
Oh god another one.
NBIG
AKIHTB
We have "If You Know, You Know", and "If You Don't Know, Now You Know"
But what is AKIHTB?
It's from the old GI Joe cartoons.
"And knowing is half the battle!"
IAGBB
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.
NAMBLA. Those chuckle fucks at the North American Man/Boy Love Association really made it difficult for us members of the North American Marlon Brando Look-Alikes.
It bothers me when OO doesnt stand for "object oriented"
I'm going to answer the opposite question. My favorite acronym is TLA (three letter acronym)because it mocks the whole system.
I also love OOO specifically because it is ghosty.
ATM. Friends use it for 'at the moment', but all I see is ass-to-mouth.
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.
There's a11y and l10n. What else is there?
Somewhat similar: k8s
Kubernetes is fine because it's easy to keep track of, it looks and pronounces similar to the real word.
O11y for "observability", though, that one's pretty rough. And people trying to make the pronunciation "ollie" make me see red.
Kates
I learned about a11y like a year ago, and thought it was 1337 speak for ally until I looked it up, and only then (like 20 years after first seeing it) did I realize what i18n meant.
What's a11y?
"Accessibility." It mainly refers to computer accessibility (like websites and apps). Ironic that a common word for accessibility is inaccessible to people who don't know what it means
Accessibility
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"
When I see BLM, my first thought is still Bureau of Land Management
CRISPR is neither a refrigerator compartment or a Nestle candy bar
YMMV. That one took me FOREVER to figure out.
WDYM...
I don't know why, it just looks unpleasant.
iirc just because i dont know what it means
PICNIC. problem in chair, not in computer.
Not an acronym, but I've been in a couple of jobs where people use "offline" to mean "not at this meeting", as in "let's take this tangential discussion offline". They would say that during an in-person meeting to take the conversation to digital (online!) media!
SMH so much hate
GABOS.
Prison lingo. Acronym for 'Game Ain't Based On Sympathy," first heard in the Louis Theroux documentary "Miami Mega Jail".
Louie: Don't... don't you feel sympathy for that person? For that other inmate you extorted?
Inmate: GABOS, man... GABOS.
Not me but my spouse hates recursive ones, like GNU. Hates them so much, active vocal expressions of dislike. Anyways the setting I'm making is filthy with recursive acronyms for no reason.
I hate "lol" as punctuation. If you're legitimately laughing out loud, fine. But, I really hate:
"can I show u something lol"
"I gave it to David lol"
TBF
To Be Fucked.
What’s BofA?
It's related to SugON.
What's SugON?
SugON Deez nuts.
😔
Bank of America
Bank of America deez nutz
Gott’em
YWNBAM/YWNBAW. Besides being transphobic (it's short for 'you will never be a man/woman'), I always automatically attempt to read/pronounce acronyms as if they were words, and this one sounds really stupid.
"www" for World Wide Web has always bugged me. World Wide Web is three syllables, WWW is nine.
Like all of them, I never remember what they mean and there are some people at work who love to use em. It just makes meetings take longer and emails become less legible.
I have a weird thing where I'll know an acronym that's close to another one, confuse the two, and come up with a new acronym that doesn't exist or make sense, but it "works" and then the rest of the context is just off.
The latest victim of this is "Assigned Cis At Birth"
Now that that's out in the world, I'm sorry that someone else is going to do the same thing...
I hate LFG because gamers can't agree on how to spell it or what it means... Sometimes it's spelled LFP, LFF or LFM... And sometimes it means "Looking for Guild".
Isnt LFM looking for member? Like if you have part of a group already together and just need a healer lets say. I'd say its different than LFG which in my mind is a player looking for a group
Let's Fucking Go! Let's Fucking Play! Let's - oh wait
You forgot LFT
not an acronym, but 'Est.' as in 'Established xyz'. i read it as 'Ever Since The/Time'
IKR required a search to figure out. Autocorrect takes care of these typical phrases. Imo the only one I like to use is imo for some reason.
My least favourite acronym:
What, no votes for 'goatse'?
I'll uh show myself to the logout button now
PCMCIA but we don't need to use it much nowadays
People can't memorise computer industry acronyms!
How do you pronounce that? Or is it an initialism?
pkmkia
Just rolls off the tongue huh 😄
Pekumsah
Nice 😄👌
FLOSS; only because I can only pronounce the second word as leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeber.
Fully liberatedf open source software? As in, the code has forcefully been taken away from the original coder?
Putting free/liber into an abbreviation, now we can not only shorten it but make it multi language at once
The two words don't mean the same though?
Tney do. The first one causes confusion without context, the second one is a much rarer word. I hate the situasion we've gotten ourselves into, but it is what it is.
No 'liber' means - at least if we assume the meaning for other written works - that it's public record. Unless we meant to say 'libre', but then the british immediately start screeching because french words. 'free' means that it's free, it costs nothing. Hence the two can go together, meaning that:
But yeah it sucks. Weird bullshit abbreviation bingo to play.
I always liked the comparison of free beer vs free speech. Free/libre is just a bit less clunky than saying no-charge and available.
One that always confuses me is MSM. For over 40 years it has been used to mean "Men who have sex with men", but recently conservatives started using it to mean "mainstream media" and its sometimes hard to tell which of their hates they are talking about. MSM is still widely used in the medical community when discussing/classifying patients and in the ongoing AIDS epidemic.
I hate all TLAs
Zuko?
What about TLA+?
Saving a few decieconds is the most upside they can possibly have.
Potential downsides: the reader has no comprehension, has to spend several full seconds or minutes asking the meaning, has to spend extra time mentally processing the text cos it's coded.
TLAs are stupid.
The approved industry term is Extended TLA using the initialism ETLA.
How about FLAs?
FLA itself is TLA.
Just as much as AWFLs
Wtf!
STFU
I remember watching a video by Ryan Higa thinking it meant "stop tickling furry unicorns", it wasn't until I learned what it actually meant years later that I got pretty damn disappointed.
VOD is a close second though. I hate how you could take something that refers to something so general (videos on demand), and over time starr using it to exclusively refer to past Twitch streams. I know that this is what Twitch calls them, and it's technically not wrong to call them that, but it still doesn't make sense when that's all that VOD means nowadays. I miss the days of being jealous at the Americans for having cable.
Let's see how many of these the decronym bot knows
@[email protected]
You used Spirit Speak. You establish a connection to the netherworld.
On topic, when browsing deals subs and forums, seeing ATL will always make me think of Atlanta Airport.
Either FR or PFP. "FR" just feels like another filler word. PFP... I'm too used to calling them "avatars", it just feels wrong and superfluous. I'm probably aging myself here.
Im with you on that one. I dunno where PFP came from, but it always strikes me as weird to call it that. I would just call it an avatar.
Nothing can beat the baseball stat TOOTBLAN
Thrown Out On The Basepaths Like A Nincompoop
WYD and IKR
Might be unpopular, but as a non-English native I hate that Americans need to abbreviate everything into acronyms. POSTUS, SCOTUS, AWOL, ASAP. If it's not catchy as an abbreviation it needs a new name. I don't mind it so much in small settings, but when you read anything about America and all the comments are full of acronyms it's like a puzzle I never asked for.
World Wide Web is simpler than Double U Double U Double U.
MAP, no rebranding that. Defend that shit and get in line with the rest of them and jump in feet first.
I hate the name vi. It literally means "we" in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. But I know that vi is not an acronym so it doesn't really count.
Pfa
Mine are "lol" and "lmao". I get what they originally meant, and I get why most people use them nowadays. It's just that they often signal "I have nothing to contribute, but still expect people to read my crap".
As a second (third?) place, "WYSIWYG". If you're going to coin such verbose acronym, might as well sub it with an actual word, like, dunno, "transparent".
EDIT - "lol" = "lots of laughs", "lmao" = "laughing my arse off", "WYSIWYG" = "what you see is what you get".
EDIT2: as another poster correctly pointed out, "lol" also originally meant "laughing out loud". Perhaps even more than "lots of laughs".
Isn't lol short for "laughing out loud"? Or have I been wrong for like 20 goddamn years?
No. You're quite correct.
You and me both! I always heard "laughing out loud" as well.
Wiktionary lists both "laughing out loud" and "lots of laughs". Nowadays though it's neither; on a pragmatic level it doesn't convey "I'm laughing" / "I laughed", it conveys amusement and/or lack of seriousness, depending on the context.
I actually kinda love WYSIWYG because it’s pronounced “wizzy-wig” in some circles and that always makes me chuckle
I don't even recall pronouncing it in loud voice. In English I simply say "what you see is what you get", and in Portuguese or Italian I rephrase it. (Although I remember at least one person calling it ['vizi 'vige] in Portuguese. And I was, like... "what?")
Are there circles in which it's NOT pronounced like that?
WYSIWYG, when pronounced, sounds like an Irish town with weird spelling. Like Northern Whisyghwhikh, Dublin county
What about ROFL?
Not common in general usage nowadays. Perhaps it avoided the shift?