“Amaze Another Person With Your Grasp Of Acronyms”
I am always impressed confused when people talk to me using acronyms as if I am supposed to understand everything. Perhaps it was all those years I spent teaching math to some very disinterested college freshman, but I was never one to assume that someone would understand an acronym unless I said the words first and then used the acronym later.
Oh, and I also enjoy having conversations with people that use an acronym and then get frustrated when you ask them what it stands for.
“So, I was using my PSP last night…”
“Um, PSP? As in Paint Shop Pro?”
“No, you moron, my Product Service Plan for my PlayStation Portable.”
So now I find myself taking mental notes whenever I hear someone using acronyms. I start sizing up the conversation to see if they are using it to save time (like a doctor in an emergency room) or if they are doing it because they don’t know what they are talking about and are trying to mask their inability by dazzling me with acronyms that they have heard mentioned previously.
So, today’s question is: What is your favorite acronym?
I would like to say the winner gets a free t-shirt, but I was raised to believe it is wrong to judge others, unless you are a judge, and then it is okay to think you are better than the rest.
I’ve always been partial to TLA (Three Letter Acronym).
Usually found in the wild in such contexts as “ASP? JSP? PSP? The last thing the world needs is another TLA.”
The all time winner for most acronyms for me was AT&T. When I worked there, everybody threw around (mostly company-specific, not even industry-specific stuff you had some prayer of looking up) acronyms expecting everybody to know what they were talking about.
The Richard Stallman (GNU, HURD) acronyms are my favorite, because with the recursion and all you know he pulled some muscles in the effort to be cute.
Intel was horrible with acronyms. Everyone uses them constantly and a lot of people only know the acronym. If you actually used the words they wouldn’t know what you are talking about.
My favorite was NGIP which stood for “Next Generation Information Platform”, but was referred to lovingly within the group as “Not Going Into Production”.
HOBT is a nice one.
Some I don’t like:
http://dbwhisperer.blogspot.com/2009/03/sql-server-jargon.html
MS
How about “PASS” where one of the “words” is yet another acronymn!