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?
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.
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.
Don’t worry, I liked your post.
W does that in acronyms. Compare syllables in World Wide Web…
“Dubya” is one syllable, maybe two depending on your particular accent
In what accent is “dub-ya” one syllable?
I’ve heard some folks where it comes out more akin to “dubby”
Dub-by is still 2 syllables
Some parts of texas
Anything more than “dub” will be 2+ syllables.
The b is silent and the vowels ran together
So “duh”?
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. 😅
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.
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’.
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
“Dub-yah”
Gee Ess Dub-ya
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.
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”
Initialisms are a type of acronym. All initialisms are acronyms but not all acronyms are initialisms.
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
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
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.
PEBKAC
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.
Oh, ok, I remember that now, thanks.
I’ll see about forgetting it again because it irritates me lol.
I work with early 20s kids all the time. If they ask me an easily googled non-technical question I’ll throw them a LMGTFY link. Yes, it’s snarky. But, damn kid don’t ask me ‘why is the sky blue’ or some such dumb question when you can Google it. But, if it’s technical about a system, hey I’ll call and screen share to walk you through the issue any time.
Everyone knows how to Google today, this isn’t 1992 where the internet was new and we had to teach search engine usage in school.
People ask questions in forums (online and otherwise) because they want answers from people who don’t need to Google it. They’re asking for a real interaction with a real human being who knows what they’re talking about and can be asked follow up questions.
It’s hard to believe, but there are still people out there who just want the human interaction more than a clinical answer.
Hey, I wish you were right.
But the kids I work with? We’re not exactly in the tech industry. A lot of these guys barely know how to tie their shoes, let alone how to format a google search question. And half of them feel too entitled to realize that they’re wasting my time with dumb questions, and showing a complete lack of independence and capability of a simple grown adult.
—
Say there’s an installation or office, a controlled area, that they need to access and renew their badge at. Well, how about you Google the office, get the contact info, address and hours of operation, look at their FAQs page, review what documents you need to have upon arrival and who you need to speak to when you get there, ensuring you arrive during their business hours and/or make an appointment as required?
No, let’s just show up on the weekend and without the appropriate documentation to get on site then call me while talking to the front gate guard as if I’m going to fix your problem. Sorry, bud. I’ll email you a form you need to fill out and sign, then return to me so that you can then get on site. Which you would have known if you’d asked beforehand or if you checked online.
Edit: And then you complain about requiring the form, that you’ll have to go home to open the form, sign and return it, then print it after I sign and return it to you? And then my other subordinates shoot me a text exchange you’re having with them where you’re lambasting me for being mean and not helping you at the gate? Oh, ok kid. Yeah, you’ll get the form done or you won’t, and while you’re at it you can either sweet talk the guard into badging you in (which is a horrible breach in its own right) or go back home and do it. Idc if it’s 1-3 hours from your home to this office. Not my problem.
This is just one example.
And, this was a personal trip of her’s that she made, without consulting us beforehand or… letting us know that her badge had either expired or was lost. (If I remember correctly it was lost or stolen, which would require a police report, too.)
You sound like a great reason not to work where you work.
Her emergency from piss pour planning, and attempts to circumvent SOP, regulation, and security protocol are not my problem, especially when she failed to do any of the multiple things in the situation correctly, and instead tried to burden me with her problem. On my off day. When she, more than likely at this point because it has been ages and I can’t recall, either lost or had stolen her controlled access badge to a high security area.
For that specific situation, she should have been roasted alive. Instead, I provided her with the SOP required paperwork… on my off day… (that she didn’t end up using because she sweet talked the guard into giving her access.) She should have been grateful, instead of attempting to roast me to her peers who were significantly more capable, independent and intelligent than she was.
Regardless of that specific incident, I’m teaching 20 year olds to use other resources than their superiors, especially 2-3 echelons up, to fast track their problems. She shouldn’t have reached out to me to begin with.
So, ‘joy to work with’ jokes aside, in this case I’m a manager, a trainer, a teacher, a career developer.
I take kids who barely graduated high school and give them useful skills, show them levels of responsibility that they can see the fruit of their work from, teach kids who couldn’t figure out how to Google ‘why is the sky blue’ how to run a 5-7 man teams in either tactical or logistical projects. Giving them a sense of self worth and confidence in their ability to stand on their own two feet, and also showing them the worth of finding out the answers to questions on your own, before seeking assistance from above, and what routes to take when doing so.
Sometimes I’m an asshole, sometimes I’m that older guy who makes dumb jokes that are 10-15 years too old for them. But, there’s a reason for everything I do. A little LMGTFY may be snarky, but you have to understand after the 3rd or 4th time showing them how to find an answer, this or other similar options works.
If that one person, from the lost badge incident, doesn’t listen, never grows up or becomes more capable in her field and always blames everyone around her or above her for her problems? That’s not someone I want as a member of my team or organization.
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.
PEBKAC is just an elitist acronym whenever not used ironically.
Nah, that’s IT people venting due to the overpopulation of (L)users.
It’s one thing to have an initialism for dumb users and to use it shorthand in forum posts with other IT professionals, but it’s entirely another to u ironically use it IRL. I just think PEBKAC is a funny way of describing user issues that’s different than how my brain works.
Are you an Analrapist?
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.
IDK WTF TAM.
TAM?
“there”
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.
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)
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.
Interesting that they’d censor the word in the acronym
Crazy that your name is an acronym/initialism.
You are the mom those 90s articles about AOL lingo was about
I can only read it as “I Anal” and the teenage boy in me giggles and I forget what I am reading.
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!
Happily it started being known as PC-CARD.
Installing linux drivers / modules for PCMCIA wifi cards :(
That’s the neat part, you don’t
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?
IWPITTWAWOTAFTTDNKTY (I wish people in this thread would also write out the acronym for those that do not know them yet)
IA (I agree)
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?
What else is it supposed to be?
- fear the whales - because sharks are not enough.
- ferry the warriors - how else will they reach Hades?
- fuck the West - yes, I had to politicise this.
- feed the woodpeckers - hipster version of granny throwing popcorn to the pigeons.
- feel the wetness - this is sounding like porn already.
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.
Friday Tuesday Wednesday, for some reason
Fuck the world.
But it’s normally For the win?
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”
Not an acronym unless you pronounce it “Futtawuh” or something.
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.
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.
What the heck is ghif? GH often makes no sound, or an f sound, but is almost never at the start of a word.
ghost
aghast
ghetto
ghoul
gherkin
ghee
“Almost never” but the words where it is are common enough everyone knows how to say it.
I like how you say “ghee” is a common word
London, UK. Ghee is an everyday word. So is Bombay Aloo.
Dang. As an Indian-American, I rarely hear non-Indians say “ghee,” and the few times I do on YouTube videos, it’s always “ghee butter.”
It is in my house!
Cook more lol. It is common if you like making food!
For non-Indian food, I’ve seen coconut and olive oil used, almost never ghee.
Allow me to clarify…
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
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.
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.
