Acronym Antics

'Please Insert Your PIN Number'

Not long ago sales assistants would say to their customers, possibly several hundred times per shift, 'Please insert your PIN number'. I resisted a temptation to summon up some haughty distain, and reply: 'I can insert my PIN, or my PI number, or my Personal Identification Number. I cannot, however, enter my Personal Identification Number number, because there is no such thing'.

This acronymic muddle, like the greengrocer's apostrophic muddle, is hardly unique. All motor vehicles carry a VIN i.e., Vehicle Identification Number; which is referred to as the VIN number. The dashboard also carries a MIL light, or Malfunction Indicator Light light. In electrical engineering there is Transistor-to-Transistor Logic, known for short as TTL logic. I've even been asked for the location of nearest ATM machine. Equally teeth-grinding are HIV virus, RAM memory, LCD display, LED light, TSB Bank, SAT test, GPS position, ABS brakes and DOS operating system.

This is a common problem with the Thee Letter Acronym, known for short as the TLA acronym. (I will not belabour the distinction between an abbreviation and an acronym. I'm not a pedant, after all.)

Yet here is a strange thing: whenever I spoke jokingly of the VCR recorder, my seeming ignorance was met with gasps. Who is this idiot? Then digital DVD discs came along, which meant lasers. Now, 'laser' was born as an acronym; namely, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Originally, therefore, it was LASER. But, now that it's considered a word in its own right, we have laser. And so, we are sometimes told, the digital DVD disc is read by laser light. And some scientists, who really should know better, refer to laser radiation.

Acronyms spawn neologisms. A mechanical lock, for example, is operated by means of a tool. This is the Lock Opening and Closing Tool, or LOCT. Insofar as this is now a word in its own right, we have loct. Next time you enter your house, you will insert a loct into the locthole. I'm pulling your leg, of course. But if a noun already exists, why invent an acronym? In the USA States of America, the law is upheld by a LEO, or Law Enforcement Officer. (Although capitalised, it should be lower case: it's pronounced as in 'lion'). In the old days we asked a police officer for directions to the nearest ATM machine; today it's a LEO, or possibly a LEO officer - the law enforcement type.

The Americans love TLA acronyms: CIA, DOD, FBI, DOJ, CDC, DOT, IRS, and KFC chicken. Their military moreover love long acronyms: AACG, AADC, AADP, AA&E, AAEC, AAFES, AAFIF. (And that's just a smidgeon of the A-ones.) More obviously we have the IED, meaning Improvised Explosive Device device. If, by 'explosive device', we mean 'a chemical reaction for which the expansion of gas cannot keep pace with the rate of heat release, thus generating a supersonic blast wave', then I think it's what we used to call a 'bomb'. It's been cobbled together in a garden shed, rather than mass produced in a factory, but need we belabour this point? I tell you what. Since the military love acronyms so much, I would like to suggest a couple more: ZSP, or Zero Survival Probability ('suicide mission'); and ICP, or Inoperative Combat Personnel ('casualties').

(c) cufwulf

cufwulf@aol.com