IHNC, IJWTS
Dec. 4th, 2008 02:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackThe longest acronym[1] I see regularly is some variant on "I have no comment, I just wanted to say" followed by a witty comment. The question is, have you seen something longer that's readily parseable without having to work it out (presumably made up from shorter well-known acronyms like this one, though I guess could be an abbreviation of a well-known long phrase).
[1] YKWIM. Pedants might[2] argue that an acronym has to be a word made up of initial letters of a phrase. Since I find it convenient to use "acronym" for common initial letter abbreviations like "IMHO", I will justify it thusly. In normal English, being pronounced is a good guide to being a word, making "laser" an acronym but "eff bee eye" not. However, on the internet, you don't have to pronounce things, so any collection of letters where the whole has an assigned meaning can be a word, whether it's pronounceable or not, so "IMHO" is a word, and hence an acronym :)
[2] OK, change that to "pedants will". OK, OK, "pedants have argued that...", etc. I might even stretch it so far as to say "pedants have argued correctly that..." :)
[1] YKWIM. Pedants might[2] argue that an acronym has to be a word made up of initial letters of a phrase. Since I find it convenient to use "acronym" for common initial letter abbreviations like "IMHO", I will justify it thusly. In normal English, being pronounced is a good guide to being a word, making "laser" an acronym but "eff bee eye" not. However, on the internet, you don't have to pronounce things, so any collection of letters where the whole has an assigned meaning can be a word, whether it's pronounceable or not, so "IMHO" is a word, and hence an acronym :)
[2] OK, change that to "pedants will". OK, OK, "pedants have argued that...", etc. I might even stretch it so far as to say "pedants have argued correctly that..." :)
no subject
Date: 2008-12-04 10:45 am (UTC)It reminds me of old acronyms like "Sealed With A Loving Kiss", but longer, ruder, and typically the name of a city. As parodied in Terry Pratchett, and with NORWICH. Alas it's impossible to tell which were actually used at the time: wikipeda doesn't even try, it just says "The acronyms, possibly including some more recent additions"; it's always difficult to tell the difference between a contemporary dirty joke and an anachronistic dirty joke :)