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 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
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
Yes! Imagine not being American, and Magic is the only thing you could ever associate MTG with.
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
Who me? Or the one I was replying to, right? 😄
It sounds like you’re saying “You ass”
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. ❤️
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.
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
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.
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
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 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.
Not an acronym though, but an initialism. Acronyms are said like a word, like CRISPR, initialisms aren’t, like ATM.
you’re being pointlessly pedantic. Initialisms are also considered acronyms by most defimitions and by common use.
I don’t think they’re being pointlessly pedantic. I’ve been around POS systems and some people call it by the letters, P.O.S. & others by the acronym, sounding like “pause”. Nobody assumes you’re talking about a Piece of Shit when you say “pause”. Also for OOO (“oooh”) vs O.O.O., which doesn’t roll off the tongue, but you don’t sound like Casper.
Now, being pointlessly pedantic, I find it interesting to think that if we continue to use the word acronym for initialisms, then the word acronym will actually be initialisms! English is weird!
Yeah when you say “pause” they assume you’re referring to a position.
im not saying theres no difference between pronouncing each lettwer and pronouncing the whole thing like a word, just that both are generally considered acronymns so the correction was unnecessary.
Oh shit. TIL. Also, I guess TIL is not an acronym then lol.
Speaking of ATM, am I the only one that defaults this to “ass to mouth”, before realizing they mean asynchronous transaction machine?
Automated Teller
- Ass to Mouth
- Automated Teller Machine
- Asynchronous Transfer Mode
Ah yes this is the one
Automated Teller Machine
Hmmm, interesting. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone say “TIL” out loud. When I read it, I say it as an acronym (“till”) in my head, but I think if I ever said it out loud, I’d probably go with the initialism (“tee-eye-ell”). All that to say, maybe it’s both?
I always pronounce all initialisms as words if even close to possible. I don’t care whether or not they were meant to. Till, fuhtfy, fuhmmuhl, wuhtf, and so on. Some I understand why others might say as individual letters, but others I have no clue because it doesn’t make sense to me at all. Why would you ever say double-u tee eff, which is two syllables longer than the actual words?
I always read ATM like that
literally no one cares.
For years I had no idea Point of Sale was a thing, and always thought people were talking about systems they hated as pieces of shit.
Kinda like a TPS report.
I’ll get you a copy of that memo
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.
Sometimes, initialism or alphabetism is used to refer to acronyms formed from the string of initials which are usually pronounced as individual letters
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.
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.
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.
I agree, most fin acronym to say
It’s infuriating to read all the comments without explanations what said acronym means.
IDK WTF TAM.
TAM?
“there”
IITRATCWEWSAM means what op said.
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.)
PEBKAC
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.
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.
lots of people use bofa! >!bofa deez nuts!<
Spoiler tags work a little different here. Try this:
::: spoiler lots of people use bofa! bofa deez nuts! :::the tags I used work fine for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Gotcha. The tags didn’t render for me (I’m using Jerboa on Android)
They don’t work on the Lemmy website, I guess your app is doing non-standard stuff
That’s not official though
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
What do they mean?
I think IAnal is pretty obvious. Pretty sure BofA is sexual too. 🤷♂️.
In case anyone wants the real meanings: I am not a lawyer, read the f***ing manual, bank of america.
You are the mom those 90s articles about AOL lingo was about
IANAL is completely 100% totally entirely not obvious. At all
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.
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. ;-)
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.
I always read ofc as “of fucking course” it makes no sense to include the f.
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.”
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
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.
Jraphical interchange format
Choosy moms choose GIF
I fucking hate the stupid GIF / JIF debate. It’s GIF!
You mean the GIF / GHIF debate. I agree, it flies in the face of common sense to say it the wrong way.
Gif
Gift
GiffordGiraffe
Giant
GistIf 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.
