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What is your least favourite acronym? (lemmy.nz)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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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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[–] 15 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Not an acronym though, but an initialism. Acronyms are said like a word, like CRISPR, initialisms aren’t, like ATM.

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  • [–] 43 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    you're being pointlessly pedantic. Initialisms are also considered acronyms by most defimitions and by common use.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    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!

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    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?

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