Last week’s newspaper crossword puzzle offered a clue to which the answer was “Oxford English Dictionary.” My first thought was filled with glee: lots of letters to fill in! My pen poised in my right hand midair, ready to swoop in and start filling in the squares, waiting for my left index finger to find the clue, then follow it over to the appropriate square in the puzzle. Three letters — that’s all they want? I suppose the best part about it being only three letters is I don’t have to worry about spelling it incorrectly. You want to be confident in all things crossword puzzle if you’re going to be using a pen.
But I digress.
OED is a familiar initialism, given that it’s been around for more than a minute, plus a word lover like me is bound to know her English dictionaries as long as those dictionaries didn’t pop up this year. I’m waiting on a new dictionary, one the English-speaking world needs in a desperate way. I’m talking about a dictionary that covers the acronym- and initialism-speak that has taken over internet communication. This dictionary would only be available online. A printed version would be outdated before it came off the press, destined for the remainder pile.
But an online one for sure. I’d be a devoted customer. Every day it seems there’s a new acronym that’s been invented for one purpose only — to save our thumbs from excessive typing. I recognize the need, because I have it even worse — I am a one-finger phone typist, and when I receive a text message that requires a more nuanced answer than “OK,” I call the message sender back. Typing is for computer keyboards, not for oversized postage-stamp-sized phones.
So, yes, an online dictionary for internet acronyms and initialisms. A short lesson on the difference between the two: OED is an initialism, like AI and LOL. You don’t pronounce them as “Oweed” or “Eye” or “loll”; you pronounce each letter O-E-D or A-I or L-O-L. That’s initialism. An acronym is everything else, including abbreviations that form a term we pronounce as a word, like NATO and NASA. Most abbreviations are initialisms, but the internet police are lumping initialisms and acronyms together and calling them all acronyms.
I approve. What I don’t approve is that our written language is now full of acronyms. But if we’ve got to have them, let’s stick with one name LOL. Well, not so much LOL as ACBASAAC (a cross between a sigh and a chuckle).
I helped you with that last one, but what about NNML^ or SYL?^^ You’re going to need that dictionary. All these new acronyms — it’s hard to keep up. It’s said that if the acronym is repeated enough times by enough people, it enters the acronym lexicon. Which makes you wonder how ROTFLMAO made it. How many people do you know who roll on the floor laughing their a** off? None, right?
There’s a new and somewhat ambiguous acronym making the rounds these days: TL;DR. I had to look it up: too long; didn’t read. I understand the sentiment; it happens to me all the time. But after one of those TD;LRs, I don’t now offer my lengthy opinion about said TD;LR article. I wouldn’t feel qualified, and neither should the opinionated critic. Maybe there’s a nuance to TL;DR that means “too long; don’t read,” as in “Too long, trust me, you don’t want to read it but I did from start to finish so you don’t have to,” but that doesn’t make for a catchy acronym.
I think of my mother at times like these. She would have been in her element acronymizing her expressions, which were many. Here’s just a slice.
WTYFGH (Wait Till Your Father Comes Home) // OMDB (Over My Dead Body) // YMABDTAW (You Make A Better Door Than A Window) // KTBWOS (Kill Two Birds With One Stone) // GYAI;YTAM (Give You An Inch; You Take A Mile) // IITYOITYAMT (If I’ve Told You Once I’ve Told You A Million Times)
TTFN.
^ Not now, maybe later. ^^ See you later.
Our musical diversion this week comes from Sinead O’Connor …
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