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

submitted 10 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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[–] milo128@lemm.ee 43 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] Anonymouse@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months 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!

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah when you say “pause” they assume you’re referring to a position.

[–] milo128@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months 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.