Too many acronyms taking over

Bretrick

Bretrick

Well-known Member
Location
Perth Western Australia
Not everyone understands what they mean. Reading the news just now I came across WFH Situation. (work from home)
TMA-2KTO.?????? (Too many acronyms to keep track of)
OOSOOM (out of sight out of mind)
BOGSAT (“bunch of guys sitting around talking”)
AYFKMWTS? ((Are you f*cking kidding me with this sh*t?)
Personally I find it annoying having to research what they mean.
Many times I do not even bother. I see it as a sign of laziness which is the way the English Language is going.
 

Then of course you have an acronym within an acronym, called a nested acronym. For example, FSM for (Flight Projects Support Office) Systems Manager and TIDS for Treatment of (Inflammatory Bowel Disease) in Daily Study. The military in particular loves nested acronyms!
 
When I was working during Covid, I was lucky enough to work from home. However, that meant one of the ways we communicated in addition to zoom meetings was through something called Teams. It was like texting online between work colleagues. And I was the oldest, 65 years old, my boss was 28, a lovely boss to have (most of my bosses were shits) and everyone else was younger than me too. Half of the time, well, maybe I'm exaggerating, a third of the time, I had to ask what did they mean as they basically spoke in acronyms, for example, IMO, etc.
 
Bretrick said:
Not everyone understands what they mean. Reading the news just now I came across WFH Situation. (work from home)
TMA-2KTO.?????? (Too many acronyms to keep track of)
OOSOOM (out of sight out of mind)
BOGSAT (“bunch of guys sitting around talking”)
AYFKMWTS? ((Are you f*cking kidding me with this sh*t?)
Personally I find it annoying having to research what they mean.
Many times I do not even bother. I see it as a sign of laziness which is the way the English Language is going.
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The acronyms rarely add anything of any real relevance to the conversation. So if you just skip over the ones you don't know, you'll get the same meaning from the message.
 
carouselsilver said:
When I have been exposed to too many acronyms, I take a good dose of older literature like Charles Dickens or Charlotte Bronte.
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Some acronyms are spoken so frequently that we begin to think of them as words, like radar, radio detection and ranging. Scuba, self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, and laser: Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. Then there are acronyms that have been words for so long that their originality is all but forgotten. For example: 'Motel' was once motor hotel.

Another forgotten acronym is Taser. Still in use around the globe, one of the most surprising things about Taser is the origin of its name. NASA researcher, Jack Cover, was a huge fan of a series of sci-fi books featuring the character Tom Swift, written by Victor Appleton in the early 20th Century. In it, the character Tom carried an electric rifle, which was another inspiration for the technology Jack would go on to develop. Therefore, TASER stands for: "Thomas A Swift’s Electric Rifle."

Time Magazine argue that their title comes from an acronym: "The International Magazine of Events." Sounds more contrived to me.
 
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