Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world Corroded @leminal.space 2mo ago

What acronyms are you annoyed to see take on other meanings?

I'm running into this more and more with BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and Bungo Stray Dogs.

I was wondering if anyone else has run into anything similar?

113

113 comments

CP does not mean:

Cyberpunk

Club Penguin

Cleft Palate

Cerebral ~~Policy~~ Palsy

Conservative Party

If you're on a Unix terminal it means "copy," anywhere else it means what Josh Duggar is into.
Wireless Application Protocol. I can no longer say on my CV that I 'worked on WAP in the early 2000s'.
Apparently BBC no longer means Big Black Chicken
Not annoyed but amused. I suffer from IBS. And in my work there are Internal Business Systems. So I suffer from IBS twice.
Not annoyed, but i enjoy annoying red hats by taking about how much I appreciate BLM. As soon as they start spouting off I start talking about how we camped on Bureau of Land Management land out west and it was great.

Alternatively, how Brennan Lee Mulligan is a great GM

Also Game Master > General Motors
So many people think Mac is an acronym for whatever reason, as in "Do you use MAC or PC?".

I don't know why they think this. It was never formatted that way in any of Apple's marketing materials.

It really annoys me. In my head when I read it I hear "MAC" pronounced in the voice of Gilbert Godfrey.

I'm guessing they're confusing it with MAC addresses? They probably saw the term somewhere and wrongly assumed it had something to do with Apple Macs.
OK, I'll bite. Pedant time.

"BSD" isn't an acronym. It's an initialism.

Acronyms are pronounced as a words rather than reading the letters, and, well, you'd be beatboxing if you pronounced BSD as a word.
D2 is either a type of steel or a great game in 8th grade.

LFG used to mean Look For Group in a lot of games. Now it's let's fucking go.
I remember being annoyed when PS2 suddenly was a gaming console and not a line of personal computers from IBM.

Yes, I know it's PS2 vs. PS/2 when written out, but no one ever says PS-slash-2 when speaking.
Another one that came to mind is TF2. I like Titanfall 2 more than Team Fortress 2 but I associate the acronym with Team Fortress 2.
Isis used to be the fake spy agency Archer worked for. Damn those middle-eastern radicals stealing the name!
SWIFT is not a programming language it's a trading protocol that runs the global financial markets which I'm working very hard to forget but still it deserves respect.
AC -- alternating current, ass crust

DTF -- downtime failure, discreet time fourier, down to funkyland

SMB -- server message block, some mammamia bros

IANAL -- i am not a lawyer, sure you do
CBT - Clifford Brick Transport. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Cock Ball torture.
All the time. Like at some point SC stopped meaning StarCraft and started meaning Splinter Cell. And don't let me get started about the famous roleplaying game PoE. Yes, or course I mean Pillars of Eternity and not Path of Exile.
The Linux Kernel has a specific one, whereby DRM doesn't mean Digital Rights Protection, only thing I could think of.
CS2

Counter Strike 2 or Cities Skylines 2?
DP is Diet Pepsi
LoRa - to me it's Long Range Radio and has been for a decade. It has some fucking AI slop meaning that recently came up, now.
A group of separatist rebels in the Philippines formed the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

MILF, for short.
CBT

Cock and Ball Torture and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.
CNC :(
PDF file must be one of the Most brainrot offenders
It's weird seeing news articles about the SEC that have nothing to do with college football.
It's not annoying, only quite funny, but every time I see CSM (Chainsaw Man) I can only think of Coño'e su Madre / Cocha'e su Madre (Motherfucker in Latinamerica).
BotW will always mean Best of the Worst to me. Zelda fans should just get over it and spell it out every time. And I like that game.
I'm aging myself here, but WoW used to stand for "Winds of War", an expansion for Heroes of Might and Magic IV. Then, World of Warcraft was released...
never thought of the anime as bsd. sorta funny. I have to admit magic the gathering became so popular all of a sudden in the news.
MK, Mortal Kombat, not Mario Kart.

CH, Chapulín Colorado, not Christina Herrera.

SNK, Shin Nihon Kikaku, not Shingeki no Kyojin.
Ooh I've got one! I wanna do a poll within this thread, so please respond with a spoiler tag so you don't influence anyone's answers.

But what does IMHO mean to you?

Comment below and then come back and read this:

spoiler

To me it means in my humble opinion, but it seems more and more these days I see people referring to it as in my honest opinion.

Is this a coincidence? Or a commentary on how people have gotten more rude or self centered? IDK, I'm not qualified to answer. I just think it's really interesting that it means both things, and it completely changes the vibe of what you're saying if someone interprets it one way or the other.
SNAFU, how it went from chaotic situation to make a blunder?

Also, why are Americans so obsessed with acronyms?
I use dbt at work, meaning both data build tool, as well as dialectic behavioural theory
Acromyms form words. You mean abbreviations.
🤣
DNF: Disjunctive normal form, Dandified YUM

113 comments