154
votes
Accepted
What does “l. s. d.” stand for?
Given the location and the period, I think it's likely to be a commonly-used variant of "£sd" for "pounds, shillings, and pence" - that is, money. The abbreviation comes from the Latin librae, solidi, ...
- 22.5k
40
votes
How should URL be pronounced?
It's not scientific, but the Google Ngram of "a URL" (blue line) versus "an URL" (red line) for the period 1990–2008 suggests that the published works contained in the Google Books ...
- 160k
39
votes
Accepted
Is "personal PCs" regarded as a case of RAS Syndrome?
Though the word personal is repeated in the expansion "personal personal computer", the two repetitions use different meanings of the same word. The first personal means "owned or used by a specific ...
- 1,307
31
votes
Accepted
What’s the term for an acronym that refers to another acronym?
You're correct, it is in fact a nested acronym:
nested acronym: an acronym where one of the letters represents another acronym. e.g.
AIM (AOL Instant Messenger)
You're also correct that it's not a ...
- 40.7k
26
votes
Accepted
Is an apostrophe with a decade (e.g. 1920’s) generally considered “incorrect”?
My answer focuses on the header question about decades—which is the question that most readers will probably expect to find answers to here. With regard to decades expressed in numerals rather than ...
- 160k
23
votes
What does “l. s. d.” stand for?
L.S.D. was the standard abbreviation for "Pounds, shillings, and pence".
See wikipedia.
Note that wikipedia claims it was usually written £sd and "sometimes" as Lsd. That was not my experience - I ...
19
votes
What’s the term for an acronym that refers to another acronym?
It is also called a macronym or a multi-layered acronym, although the term "nested acronym" is more common:
A macronym, or nested acronym, is an acronym in which one or more letters stand ...
- 10.2k
16
votes
Is it CoViD? Or COVID? Covid? How should the word be spelled?
Official nomenclature and journalistic practice
A recent item by Elisabeth Ribbans, "COVID or Covid? The comfort of pedantry at a time of national crisis," in The Guardian (April 19, 2020), ...
- 160k
14
votes
What is the difference between FYI and JFYI?
JFYI is an acronym standing for "just for your information". You can think of it as being a kind of preemptive response to the question "Why are you telling me?". For example, in the exchange:
"I'm ...
- 17.8k
13
votes
Accepted
Why do we say GBP instead of UKP?
"GBP" is a written convention used in exchange markets and a few other places. We don't "say" GBP.
GBP does not stand for "Great Britain pounds" or "Great British ...
- 3,351
11
votes
Why use BCE/CE instead of BC/AD?
While this issue always seems to get mired in arguments about political correctness, I'd offer another perspective. I switched to BCE/CE before I was even aware of the political correctness issue: I ...
- 2,343
11
votes
Accepted
Meaning of SoA in a review of an academic paper
The reviewer is likely referring to state of the art, covered in or equivalent to the literature review for an academic work.
When researching the term, I found a reviewer note for another article ...
- 38.4k
10
votes
Accepted
Tag (the game) = "Touch and Go"?
It seems to me that "touch and go" is nothing more than a backronym (Wikipedia).
From the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for tag (n.2):
"children's game," 1738 (in reference to "Queen Mary's ...
- 37.9k
8
votes
Accepted
What is the poetic meter of 'O.K.'?
This specific question can be answered by any dictionary. However, there is a more general question underlying it which may merit closer attention, and that is how pretty much all two-letter letter-...
- 133k
8
votes
Accepted
Why is electrocardiogram abbreviated EKG instead of ECG?
The problem with using "ECG" for electrocardiogram is that it sounds very similar to "EEG," which is the abbreviation for electroencephalogram. The former is a graph of heart ...
- 1,400
8
votes
Accepted
The origin of slang GOAT (in a field) for the "greatest of all time"
GOAT as an acronym for "(the) greatest of all time" (also considered as a noun) originally referred to Muhammad Ali, one of the greatest boxers of all time. The first written usage is from ...
- 61.6k
7
votes
What does “l. s. d.” stand for?
The correct form is £sd, for Pounds Shillings and Pence. £ is the symbol for pounds sterling, in the same way that $ is the symbol for dollars. I am an old, ex bookkeeper, I would write £ dozens of ...
- 79
7
votes
Accepted
When did 'RINO' begin to be used as an acronym for 'Republican in name only'?
A search on newspapers.com pushes the earliest date back a little bit further, to January and February of 1994, still in contexts that imply that the term was well-known in conservative circles, to ...
- 22.3k
7
votes
Should I capitalize the acronym of a word?
What you are trying to do is write an acronym (german wikipedia article). When writing a german acronym like you are doing here you normally capitalize only the first letter. It's called a Silbenwort (...
- 346
6
votes
Accepted
Acronyms in formal writing
Whether you should use initialisms at all is a matter of how strictly formal your formal paper is supposed to be. But even supposing that certain initialisms are acceptable, it is worth noting that ...
- 160k
6
votes
Accepted
Term for Internet or Texting Acronyms, e.g. LOL, IMHO, M8
Generally, it's called "chat speak" or "text speak" as it originated in shorthand used when writing text messages and in chat rooms on the internet.
The main Wikipedia article calls it SMS language ...
- 3,547
6
votes
Accepted
The recent trend of saying the acronym instead of the sentence/phrase is stands for
I know urban Dictionary is not generally considered an acceptable source, but it seems to be appropriate for this application...
Texttalk
TextTalk When a person talks like they text. They say the ...
- 11.7k
6
votes
Tag (the game) = "Touch and Go"?
According to this, the Touch and Go acronym is specific to competitive go-karting. https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/TAG
- 61
6
votes
Is it CoViD? Or COVID? Covid? How should the word be spelled?
COVID-19 stands for "Corona Virus Disease 2019" (ref.); therefore it is an acronym and should be treated as such.
"Covid-19" seems to have acquired much the status of a regular ...
- 18.8k
5
votes
When does an acronym lose its capitalization, e.g. RaDAR 'radar'?
Several of the other answers use examples of acronyms that remain capitalized which aren't actually acronyms. Technically speaking, if you pronounce the individual letters of the term instead of ...
- 4,249
5
votes
Use of 'the’ in front of acronyms and initialisms
As other answerers have observed, acronyms (like UNESCO) generally do not take a definite article and initialisms (like UNHCR) generally do. However, there are a number of exceptions to this rule—...
- 160k
5
votes
5
votes
Should one use "an" or an "a" before an acronym beginning with the letter H?
As several people have already stated, in both speech and writing, the only thing that matters is how the particular writer/speaker would pronounce the sound that follows the indefinite article. If he ...
- 12.5k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible