Mostly because of message boards, certain acronyms have become part of my automatic thinking, and when I see them in other contexts, it gets me all flustered.
For example, there is a giant POD storage unit next door, and of course, all I can think of is Print on Demand, though it means Portable on Demand storage.
What are yours?
There's another popular "POD" thing, the Podcast, a "broadcast" intended to be played back on the the now-ubiquitous iPod. The iPod is such a successful brand, probably more people know what it is than know what a generic "portable music player" is or even more obscure, "portable MP3 player" is.
Having worked in electronics engineering and computers, I know lots of technical acronyms. In enginneering school, VAR was Volt-Amps Reactive, but when I got out of college there were computer sellers who sold systems with specific software packages and the sellers had some alleged expertise in that software, and THEY were called VAR's or "Value Added Retailers."
That was the early 1980's. There was a semi-joke in the late '90's, a reporter asked a technical professional what the biggest challenge of Y2K would be, who responded "the running out of all Three-Letter Acronyms." But of course, as I demonstrated, that had already been happening.
Then there's AA (that's NOT American Airlines, folks!) which is chock full of acronyms, initialisms, slogans, pithy sayings and whatnot. It was always amusing (well, for the first few dozen times, anyway) to hear some old man say "Sorry, folks, but I have PMS today..." (Piss and Moan Syndrome)
Many of the most-used and important words in AA are acronyms, some with more than one "expansion": Group Of Drunks, Good Orderly Direction, False Expectations Appearing Real, F*** Everything And Run, Face Everything And Recover, Frantic Effort to Appear Recovered, Son Ofa B**** Everything's Real,... The ISM at the end of alcoholism is "I, Self and Me."
Before I got to AA, HP was Hewlett Packard, a test-equipment-and-calculator company (that also made a big killing on laser and inkjet printers), but then it became Higher Power.
[what were surely some of George Carlin's favorite acronyms snipped...]
Ok, Ok.
MC will never more be master of ceremonies
PC is no longer a policeman
BIC is no long a brand of cheap pen
In the '70's BIC was also a brand of turntable (remember LP's and 45's?) and stereo speakers. They don't even MAKE stereos anymore, they only make Home Theater (spelled Theatre if it's over $5,000) Sound Systems.
PC became Personal Computer when IBM made one with that name in 1981 - it had various names before, "home computer," "microcomputer," I forget what else, but IBM finally gave us the de facto standard name for it.
PC is also Politically Correct.
In engineering a PC board is a Printed Circuit Board, often abbreviated PCB. But then PCB's are those bad, cancer-causing things in the oil used to cool utility-pole mounted transformers.
I could go on and on. Perhaps you've heard of the 12-step program for people who talk too much - On-and-on-and-on-and-on-anon.
Thanks Maryn!
