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What is your least favourite acronym? (lemmy.nz)

submitted 11 months ago by thatsTheCatch@lemmy.nz 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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[-] wandermind@sopuli.xyz 2 points 11 months ago

Sometimes, initialism or alphabetism is used to refer to acronyms formed from the string of initials which are usually pronounced as individual letters

[-] victorz@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

That's an unfortunate, incorrect phrasing. 😅

[-] wandermind@sopuli.xyz 1 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] victorz@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

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.

this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024

361 points (96.2% liked)

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